Help picking UPS for "network" cabinet

[Lil'John]

Title basically states it. But to clarify.

I have five items in my network cabinet that I want to have power for about 1 hour after power loss.

The five items are:
Cable modem: (Arris CM820) rated at 5-5.5 Watts
Router : (Linksys E3000) rated at 7 Watts
Switch : (D-link DGS-1024D) rated at 13.5 to 30 Watts
POE injector : (12 port) ~120 Watts
OOMA box : rated at 5-8 Watts

So the total for the above is a hair under 200 Watts.

I'm looking for a quality UPS that will run those items for about 1 hour.

The modem, router, and ooma need to be maintained for phone service during power outage for emergency purposes.

The switch and POE injector need to be maintained for security camera during "theft" power outage. A laptop will be used to record during power outage under normal battery power.

So what do you recommend?

Space is a little bit of a premium. At least one dimension has to be under 7 inches

 

[Red Squirrel]

Personally I'd recommend an inverter-charger for that instead of a UPS, basically it's a UPS except you connect your own, bigger batteries.

I use this one: http://www.amazon.ca/Tripp-Lite-APS750-Inverter-Charger/dp/B0007PGAG6?

There may be cheaper options, just watch out, some of them are meant more for camping and they actually don't switch to battery right away.

Connect a few 100AH marine batteries and you'll have run time for several hours. I have all my servers on mine with 4 100AH batteries and get about 4 hours or so.

Though if you don't want to spend that kind of money, you can look at business/enterprise class APCs which will tend to have bigger batteries, find out the amp hour of the battery and the voltage (sometimes there are more than one so it's 24v or 48v) then you can figure out the run time.

So say a UPS uses a string of 48v and each battery is 7.2 amp hour since they're in series that gives you 7.2 amp hour at 48 volts. If there are 2 packs then it's 14.4ah. 200w is 4.1 amps at 48v so you would get 1.7 hours. I did not take into account inefficiency or other factors in my calc so just to be safe, let's say 1 hour or a tad more to get a more realistic figure.

 

[Lil'John]

Personally I'd recommend an inverter-charger for that instead of a UPS, basically it's a UPS except you connect your own, bigger batteries.

I use this one: http://www.amazon.ca/Tripp-Lite-APS750-Inverter-Charger/dp/B0007PGAG6?

There may be cheaper options, just watch out, some of them are meant more for camping and they actually don't switch to battery right away.
<snip>

I won't say cost isn't an issue but I'm a firm believer in buy once, cry once.

What you have shown is very interesting. I'll have to look into it a bit more. But if I understand it correctly, if I have it plugged into a regular 120V home outlet, it provides a pass through as well as charges the battery. If power is lost, it switches to the battery immediately with no loss of power.

How good/bad is this on the battery?

 

[Red Squirrel]

I won't say cost isn't an issue but I'm a firm believer in buy once, cry once.

What you have shown is very interesting. I'll have to look into it a bit more. But if I understand it correctly, if I have it plugged into a regular 120V home outlet, it provides a pass through as well as charges the battery. If power is lost, it switches to the battery immediately with no loss of power.

How good/bad is this on the battery?

Yep that's how it works. It's pretty good on the battery as it just keeps it into a float charge mode when it's standby, so it's basically like having the battery on a trickle charger. Most if all UPSes will do the same thing. You get what you pay for with batteries though, I only got cheap Canadian Tire Motomaster batteries and while they still hold a charge well I don't quite get the run time I originally did, but can't complain for the price and easy ability to expand. I get about 4 hours with 400w of stuff and 4 100AH deep cycle batteries.


Oh, and keep in mind flooded batteries produce hydrogen when charging, so if you go with that you want to ensure proper ventilation.

For your setup you'd probably be fine with just one battery though, I would not really worry about venting it outside you just don't want it in an enclosed cabinet and avoid sparks near terminals but want the air to circulate and just mix with the general air of the room/house. You can get a sealed gel cell too but those are more expensive, but you also don't have to worry about leaks.