OT: Battery backup

[Bill Campbell]

On Fri, Feb 25, 2011, Richard Kreiss wrote:
>> -----Original Message-----
>> Behalf Of Bill Campbell
>> Sent: Friday, February 25, 2011 1:04 PM
>> To: filepro-list at lists.celestial.com
>> Subject: Re: OT: Battery backup
>> 
>> On Fri, Feb 25, 2011, Richard Kreiss wrote:
...
>> A half-hour power outage?  You guys are pikers.  We get week-long ones far
>> too frequently during the winter when the wind gets going.  No UPS smaller
>> than a house is going to keep things going that long.
>
>Auto accident taking out a pole.  BGE had figured 3 hours to get us back
>online.  It only took 30 minutes.

Those are the quickies here.  The road we live on is two-lane, very twisty,
and teenagers taking out poles happens frequently.

>> 
>> Each of our racks has at least a 1,000VA APC SmartUPS which keep things
>> going until I can get things switched to generator power.
>
>I have my server and one workstation on one of these.
>
>The rest are 720va units for single machines.

Sounds like what I have in my wife's office upstairs which also
has our Airport Extreme wireless access point.

...
>Also, my phone system continues to work.  I have FIOS and the phones
>maintained a dial-tone.  At least the wired ones.

FIOS isn't available here, and the Comcast cables are pretty old
as Mercer Island was one of the first places to get it.  We have
lots of trees, and very little underground wiring.

Our house is about 20,000 feet from the QWest CO which requires
multiple repeaters for the T1.  This T has been replaced several
times in the 12+ years it's been in use.  At least now our
contract with Integra Telecom gives us credit for any outage over
4 hours duration.

...
>> On a related note, when we had a week-long outage in December 2009,
>> Comcast cable was down for that time plus another week after the power
>> came back on.  Think of that when thinking of switching all your voice
>lines to
>> a broadband provider.  Our QWest provided T1 and land lines never went
>> down during these outages.
>> 
>I did that as I have more confidence in Verizon keeping their systems up
>then Comcast.  That's why I switched from Comcast to Verizon among other
>things.

Verizon in the area (nee GTE) was long noted for crappy POTS
service.  When I started Celestial in late 1984, many people
selected locations for businesses so they weren't in GTE
territory.  We've had Verizon cell service for quite a while, and
that's been excellent.

>One always has cell phones as long as the power isn't completely out.  Re:
>New York City blackouts - no cell phones but the old POTS phones worked.

One also has to keep the cell phones charged.  My old Motorola
flip phone lasts about 3 days of my normal usage so that's
usually not a problem.

>I have considered putting in a generator.  However, this in a condo
>community and I would have to get the Architectural Board to approve putting
>in a generator.  I might get it as I have an end unit and it wouldn't annoy
>my neighbors.

The Honda EU3000IS we have is extremely quiet, and we've never
had a complaint from the neighbors, the closest being about 100
feet from it.  Powering 4 racks of computers including my office,
it burns about 3 gallons of gas every 8 hours.  I have to fill it
three times a day.

Bill
-- 
INTERNET:   bill at celestial.com  Bill Campbell; Celestial Software LLC
URL: http://www.celestial.com/  PO Box 820; 6641 E. Mercer Way
Voice:          (206) 236-1676  Mercer Island, WA 98040-0820
Fax:            (206) 232-9186  Skype: jwccsllc (206) 855-5792

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