[Discuss] APC Back-UPS ES 350

[dsr at tao.merseine.nu (Dan Ritter)]

On Sat, Sep 10, 2011 at 09:08:45AM -0400, Jerry Feldman wrote:
> 
> I recently got a couple of UPS devices from a company leaving the Regus
> office. I'm pretty sure at least one of the  batteries is good. Since we
> have had a very stable power situation at home, I have never needed a
> UPS.. There are several advantage of a UPS  over just a battery backup.
> The question I have since I don't have the CD that came with it is its
> usability under Linux. Certainly from a pure electrical standpoint, it
> would keep my systems up for a short time, but most UPS systems come
> with software that can be configured to shut the system down gracefully
> in the event of a power failure. Recently, as a result of Irene we had a
> few short power outages, and last year we had a truck pull down the
> cables on our street. I haven't checked online to see if there is
> support for UPS on Linux.

Definitely. nut, upsd, apcd, and apcupsd, at least.

> The second question is operating cost. I recall a few years (15) ago at
> a BCS event, one group would pop the breakers when they plugged in their
> UPS, yet their systems worked fine with no UPS. I know the UPS will draw
> some current even if it has nothing plugged into it.

Estimate 5-10% overhead. Manufacturers usually have good specs
for their big systems, and estimates for the smaller ones.

> The third question is that there are 3 backed up sockets, but I want to
> plug in the router, cable modem, monitor and computer. Is there any
> issue connecting a couple of low power devices with an extension cord.

No problem; the UPS doesn't care about what's plugged in, just
what it draws and when.

-dsr-


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