Looking to purchase UPS

Hi All,

Apologies if this is in the wrong community.

I'm looking to get a UPS for my home server. It runs Homeassistant, Plex, and a few other things. I mainly need something to protect from power flickers/blips, and for it to allow a proper shutdown for prolonged power outages.

Here is the power useage on all my devices:

Server: 350w
NAS: 90w
Router: 42w

Any info on what to look for or which model to buy would be greatly appreciated.

27 comments

The two biggest things to look for other than capacity:
Line interactive versus standby. If you have a lot of over and under voltage events line-interactive is preferred. Standby will only kick in when power actually cuts.
Pure sine wave. I think power supplies are better about this now, but for some time PC power supplies only really worked on pure sine wave UPSs.
I bought the CyberPower CP1500PFCLCD in 2015 and its been rock solid. I replaced the batteries for the first time last year.
- Thanks for breaking it down like this. This made it alot easier to understand.

So, Eaton, Liebert/Vertiv are your premium UPSes, and while they offer all sorts of quality and features, they are pricy.
APC was in this group, until they started going with their subscription model. Now you have to be wary.
Cyberpower is perfectly fine for home use - Costco sells one that has been pretty reliable for me (I have purchased 3 of them now). I do not use for my main server, but for all my desktops and HTPC that is what I use.
I use a Eaton P5X for my main, but my wattage is a bit higher than yours.
- I can vouch for both APC and Cyberpower. My homeserver is very low wattage so I got a smaller APC one for brownouts and it has served me well.
  
  APC makes good hardware, just their software route is going down the dark road. If you do not need the software aspects/use it as a standalone device, then APC still makes good quality UPSes.
  That being said, the value:dollar ratio I still think cyberpower wins, especially for home use. My current design is Cyberpower (homeuse) || Eaton (Server/critical infra use)
- I didn't realize APC was going that route. I wanted to vomit after I saw what came up on Google.
  I don't want a UPS to connect to anything outside my network. Pretty much goes against the principle of selfhosted.
  
  Completely agree. It is sad, but with the current marketplace of "SaaS all the things" it is not really surprising.
  I want my UPS to be in my OOB network - It should not even be accessable by users in the network. Its completely isolated off.

I got an eaton 5e.. it works pretty good for my NAS and friends, and works in NUT too.
Edit: I also have a greencell generic UPS for my 3d printer, and it was a nightware to get working with NUT.
- I got an eaton 5e…
  Same here and no complains, except I shouldn't have bought the big one with the fan: when it turns on it's really noisy and for some reason it needs to blow air for a long time after the tiniest irregularity in the grid.

The question I have, why doesn't anybody make a consumer grade UPS with a built in lifepo4 battery. I see lots of videos about how you can DIY one, but I would hate to destroy a fine battery.

I have a similar setup as you and I got this. It has worked for several years without problem:
APC UPS BX1500M Backup Battery Power Supply

The cheapest CyberPower/APC that is pure sine wave should be just fine.

We use some UPSs at work for backup power at different data centers. We have a mix of APC and Eaton models.
Can’t speak to the electrical capabilities, but APC is so much easier to monitor and programmatically control because they follow the UPS RFC.
Eaton has all custom SNMP endpoints and custom REST APIs. If you just want something to setup and forget I guess it doesn’t matter, but I something to be aware of if you were planning on some automation

Is this doable with one UPS? I'm thinking of the signal wire so the device knows it's running on battery and has to shut itself down sooner or later. We have 2 (who need shutdown, +1 can just lose power I guess) different devices mentioned here.
I have one older APC UPS on the PC and one newer Eaton UPS on the NAS. Each UPS has a signal port with a cable connected to the main device that runs some software to notice when it's on battery and supposed to shut itself down after X minutes battery time.
The NAS UPS also has the router, phone and zigbee hub connected, but only the NAS will shut itself down, the rest will just lose power at some point, but those don't matter.
How do you get the server and NAS to both get the signal and both shut down after X minutes? Is there a specific UPS features required?
- Look into NUT, Network UPS Tools. It runs in a server/client type of set up. You'd install the server onto the device that has the UPS data connected to it. It then monitors the UPS status and can tell all the clients to shutdown when the UPS is running low.
  
  Thanks for the suggestion, I'll definitely look into this more.
  
  Hm but that adds a lot more complexity, as then every single network item has to have an UPS as well, right? Certainly not a problem for a company with server room and racks. But at home in a house, the hardware might be spread out across rooms and floors. If there is a switch somewhere without UPS, it will cut off certain clients from receiving the signal via network upon power outage.

Why purchase UPS and not FedEx instead?

I have a similar setup as you and I got this. It has worked for several years without problem:
APC UPS 1500VA UPS Battery Backup and Surge Protector, BX1500M Backup Battery Power Supply, AVR, Dataline Protection

I have a similar setup as you and I got this. It has worked for several years without problem:
APC UPS 1500VA UPS Battery Backup and Surge Protector, BX1500M Backup Battery Power Supply, AVR, Dataline Protection

27 comments