[rescue] WTB/Advice: UPSs

[rescue at sunhelp.org]

Thanks to bunches of you who had good thoughts:

> >   TrippLite "Internet Office" 700VA    $135.95 - 10% - $10
> > 	==> ~$112.00 shipped

I ended up ordering one of these, and I'll probably also get
at least one of the Outpost/Fry's CyberPower 575VA boxes and
compare results during next power outage.  If the 575VA boxes
are 1/3 the price and otherwise comparable, then it's a no-
brainer--but it's hard to tell from little JPEGs in a browser.
Anyone seen a good UPS comparison from a technical hardware
site or magazine recently?

I'll stay away from the APC non-Smart Back-UPS systems, since
comments brought back my memories of square-wave output and
other non-useful characteristics.  All those Back-UPS 400s
on eBay look to have a serial port for monitoring, but they
don't have a good sine-wave output  =8-( .
 
> I'd really look for places that are surplusing their older Smart type
> UPSs, since they're usually in good condition, except for the
> batteries.
I'll try to--I know that Big Mike has found such in the local
area before, so I have a call in to him in hopes he might
know of some.

> I doubt that 700VA would be an appropriate rating for
> running 5 machines, unless they're all SS1s.  :)

Right now at home, 4 x86 boxes and 1 SPARC LX--all my
more serious UNIXy systems are at work or "up on blocks"
(dysfunctional waiting for parts).  Of those 5 systems,
the only one that really matters is the one with the hardware
RAID card and attached disks, and that has battery backup
for the RAID cache RAM.

Unless I find a 1.4-5 kVA UPS somewhere locally, it looks as
though I'll end up with a fleet of smaller ones.  Since some
of my home systems run Windows and some are UNIXish, separate
per-system UPSs might actually be easier to get auto-shutdown
working with--unless someone knows of a cross-platform UPS
monitoring program that can shutdown Win(NT4/2K/XP) boxes?

  --Rip