1

We’re very lucky in the UK in that we tend to have very stable power, however our site has had some major work done recently which has resulted in one or two planned lengthy (half day) outages.

That wasn’t fun and that was planned, how do those of you in areas with poor power availability or stability cope?

I guess it’s rhetorical in that the answers are probably UPS, generators, prayer, but it certainly got me thinking how much I simply take clean stable power for granted.

8 Spice ups
2

UPSes. there are several models that will allow you to hook up multiples together to make them last longer.

Generators are good too.

3

I have a UPS at every desk. Has solved many many power related problems.

4

We had a remote site in the middle of no where’s ville that had horrific power problems. Everyone got a laptop and the UPS was massively over spec’d to run 8+ hours with the single server and the networking gear. This was not a “cheap fix” but everyone can work a full day, albeit in the dark. If you do this you check local regulations - we had to ensure 911 services were working and some safety lighting / glow strips were installed.

5

Online UPS’s and backup generators. Nothing runs more than 80% load. A few servers also have their own individual UPS.

Batteries get replaced every 3/4 years.

6

we have UPS backed up by a generator for the important stuff (servers etc)

1 Spice up
7

Generator, Automatic Transfer Switch, and UPS’ to bridge the gap.

And a plan to check the generator and make sure it has oil. Apparently.

8

Generator with UPS and line conditioners. Anything less would be uncivilized I.T.

9

Generator/UPS. If you are just having minor brownouts you can probably live with just UPS power.

EDIT: Honestly you should be on a UPS anyways. Hard power cuts do terrible things to hard drives.

10

UPS at each desk (In IT). UPS on each rack. Generator in place.

Most of the time, power isn’t a problem. But in the spring time, we have to worry about the possibility of tornadoes and in the winter time, we have to worry about ice storms, so we’re fairly well protected. We even test the generators (intentionally) on a quarterly basis.

11

Assuming that you don’t have a budget for a generator get a UPS that you might at first think is too large. I would always oversize a UPS to be on the safe side.

12

I am in a rural area with very poor power quality and each server has a UPS that is probably bigger than it needs (I get about an hour or so on UPS batteries) and I have UPSs on each piece of network equipment as well as my entire workstation area is protected by another large UPS. A generator would be great but isn’t in the cards right now so these will have to do.