I'm looking to set-up a UPS on a Windows Small Business Berver 2k8 and I've noticed that there are some large price differences for similar capacity in-line UPSs.
The most important point for me in UPS selection is that the server should have the ability to shut itself down before the UPS power runs out, so that if the server is unattended during the outage, it should minimize the risk of data loss.
From some reading it appears that Windows Server 2008 has the ability to natively recognise a UPS, which can then be managed through the battery settings on the server or via WMI. What I'm wondering if anyone know is,
Is Windows 2008 servers UPS support specific to certain brands of UPS (eg, APC) or is it likely to work with any UPS which has a USB port, which I can connect to the server?
Best Answer
In most cases, for smaller deployments, the UPS will connect to the server via USB or the UPS will be ethernet-ready.
Anywho, most major UPS providers have these awesome little cheat sheets:
http://www.apc.com/tools/ups_selector/pso/zones/
Go there, and it's got a plethora of devices (your particular server line included, probably) for you to choose from, so you can tell it exactly what you're planning to keep running when the power goes, and it'll scale a couple of models for you based on that information. Very handy if you're not too power savvy, like myself.