I recently purchased a new APC BR1500LCD UPS (battery backup) for my home data center. I ran some tests as I described in this post, to determine what type of battery backup unit I needed. The APC BR1500LCD is perfect; exactly what I was looking for.It's a very nice unit, I'm definitely enjoying the added power protection. The UPS weighs about 30 lbs (13.6 kg). However, it's slightly bigger than I thought: 5-inches wide, 8.5-inches tall, and about 13-inches long. I had to rearrange a few things in my data center to accommodate it. Not bad though for a unit that gives me roughly 25-30 minutes of battery up time with a 220 W load.
I'm also thoroughly enjoying the front LCD panel. The LCD panel shows you the current load (in watts and as a %), input voltage, output voltage, input hertz, and the estimated battery run time in minutes. The LCD panel is bright red; luckily it automatically dims itself after about 60 seconds.
So far, my tests show that the unit is very accurate at predicting how much battery time is left in minutes. It also displays the current load (in watts) with solid accuracy. To test this, I plugged in two 60 W light bulbs. Sure enough, the LCD panel on the UPS said the load was 119-120 W as expected. Strangely though, when my server and other equipment is plugged into the UPS, the wattage gauge seems a little less accurate. When connected to an actual server drawing a steady 180+ watts, the load display seems to bounce around a bit more than I would like. Either the load from the server is actually fluctuating like the UPS says it is, or something is slightly off.
When the power fails, the unit immediately switches over to battery and starts a nice beeping sequence. Unfortunately, the auto-shutdown software on the APC CD that comes with the UPS does not support Linux; so my system will not gracefully power off when the UPS battery uses its charge and is about to fail.
One slight annoyance is that the UPS only has 2 "surge only" outlets (as shown in the picture below). The other 6 outlets are battery backup. Unfortunately, in my case, I have several devices that I want to plug into the "surge only" (non-battery protected) outlets. But, since there are only 2, I'm stuck and had to plug them into the battery side of the UPS.
All in all, the APC BR1500LCD is a very nice UPS.
Here are some other pictures (click for a larger shot):
Cheers.
FOLLOWUP 6/21/09:
This morning at around 7AM, my power went out for about 6 hours. I called my local utility company, and their automated outage line claimed that the power outage in my area was due to "fallen wires." In any event, soon after the power outage began, my APC BR1500LCD woke me up with its loud "on battery" alert beeping sequence. I quickly raced to my home office, and found all of my equipment powered off except the "stuff" plugged into the BR1500LCD. Like a charm, the BR1500LCD kept my equipment on and functional for about 25-30 minutes. After 25-minutes or so, I decided to manually power off my server and networking gear to avoid any data loss. Bottom line, the APC BR1500LCD worked great. Even though this power outage lasted much longer than 25-30 minutes (the max time the BR1500LCD can keep my stuff online), it still gave me ample time to rise and manually shut down my equipment.
When the power fails, the unit immediately switches over to battery and starts a nice beeping sequence. Unfortunately, the auto-shutdown software on the APC CD that comes with the UPS does not support Linux; so my system will not gracefully power off when the UPS battery uses its charge and is about to fail.
One slight annoyance is that the UPS only has 2 "surge only" outlets (as shown in the picture below). The other 6 outlets are battery backup. Unfortunately, in my case, I have several devices that I want to plug into the "surge only" (non-battery protected) outlets. But, since there are only 2, I'm stuck and had to plug them into the battery side of the UPS.
All in all, the APC BR1500LCD is a very nice UPS.
Here are some other pictures (click for a larger shot):
Cheers.
FOLLOWUP 6/21/09:
This morning at around 7AM, my power went out for about 6 hours. I called my local utility company, and their automated outage line claimed that the power outage in my area was due to "fallen wires." In any event, soon after the power outage began, my APC BR1500LCD woke me up with its loud "on battery" alert beeping sequence. I quickly raced to my home office, and found all of my equipment powered off except the "stuff" plugged into the BR1500LCD. Like a charm, the BR1500LCD kept my equipment on and functional for about 25-30 minutes. After 25-minutes or so, I decided to manually power off my server and networking gear to avoid any data loss. Bottom line, the APC BR1500LCD worked great. Even though this power outage lasted much longer than 25-30 minutes (the max time the BR1500LCD can keep my stuff online), it still gave me ample time to rise and manually shut down my equipment.
Did you find this post helpful, or at least, interesting?