Recommendation for small USV / UPS to work with OMV

  • Hi,
    since my OMV-box is getting better it is getting more important for me...so I want to secure it with a USV/UPS.


    Is there a specific model/brand you can recommend? I am looking for a small 300-500 Watt box. This should be enough for me.


    What do you think about this:
    https://www.apc.com/shop/de/de…CHUKO-Sockets/P-BX700U-GR


    I can get it for 65€. This seems quite cheap.
    What do you think?


    Any hints welcome.


    Thanks.
    Fabian

    MoBo: Fujitsu D3417-B
    CPU: Intel Celeron G3900
    RAM: Samsung DDR4 - 8 GB ECC
    Case: Fractal Design Node 80
    HDD: SSD 64GB (System), 2*3TB+1*4TB (Data) + 1*4TB (Parity). UnionFS + Snapraid
    OMV 4
    Router: Fritzbox 7590

  • Generally it is recommended that the UPS model is supported by the Network UPS Tools. There is also a hardware compatibility list available.

    OMV 3.0.100 (Gray style)

    ASRock Rack C2550D4I C0-stepping - 16GB ECC - 6x WD RED 3TB (ZFS 2x3 Striped RaidZ1) - Fractal Design Node 304 -

    3x WD80EMAZ Snapraid / MergerFS-pool via eSATA - 4-Bay ICYCube MB561U3S-4S with fan-mod

  • I want to secure it with a USV/UPS

    What do you want to 'secure' exactly? Decades ago when crashes or power losses resulted in a filesystem in inconsistent state needing a long fsck afterwards I also used such small UPS units. But increase in power consumption, several malfunctions and lack of power outages (Germany) changed my mind. No UPS at home since why...


    At customers usual way to deal with UPS (and their failures) is to use only servers with redundant PSUs and one PSU connected to the UPS and the other to mains.


    Wrt individual products I always check the low star reviews on Amazon first, e.g. https://www.amazon.de/APC-Back…eviews#reviews-filter-bar

  • What do you want to 'secure' exactly? Decades ago when crashes or power losses resulted in a filesystem in inconsistent state needing a long fsck afterwards I also used such small UPS units. But increase in power consumption, several malfunctions and lack of power outages (Germany) changed my mind. No UPS at home since why...
    At customers usual way to deal with UPS (and their failures) is to use only servers with redundant PSUs and one PSU connected to the UPS and the other to mains.


    Wrt individual products I always check the low star reviews on Amazon first, e.g. https://www.amazon.de/APC-Back…eviews#reviews-filter-bar

    I do my backups of the server via USB-Backup. If power is lost during this backup I am afraid that the data on the server AND the data on the backupdrive is lost.
    Do you think this is not a problem?
    Thanks.
    Fabian

    MoBo: Fujitsu D3417-B
    CPU: Intel Celeron G3900
    RAM: Samsung DDR4 - 8 GB ECC
    Case: Fractal Design Node 80
    HDD: SSD 64GB (System), 2*3TB+1*4TB (Data) + 1*4TB (Parity). UnionFS + Snapraid
    OMV 4
    Router: Fritzbox 7590

  • If power is lost during this backup I am afraid that the data on the server AND the data on the backupdrive is lost

    Why data loss? You might get data corruption but majority of OMV users doesn't care about data integrity anyway (SnapRAID should take care of this but I've no idea whether SnapRAID also takes care of your backed up data).

  • Why data loss?

    Well, I always have the suspicion if I pull the power during copying of data, the data may be destroyed or the HDD may be "killed" - is this to old fashioned???
    :)
    As far as I know Snapraid is taking care of the data integrity of the main data. Of course the Backup is another case. But I am far from being an expert...
    Thanks for your input. So I am cancelling the idea of an USV/UPS at the moment...
    Best.
    Fabian

    MoBo: Fujitsu D3417-B
    CPU: Intel Celeron G3900
    RAM: Samsung DDR4 - 8 GB ECC
    Case: Fractal Design Node 80
    HDD: SSD 64GB (System), 2*3TB+1*4TB (Data) + 1*4TB (Parity). UnionFS + Snapraid
    OMV 4
    Router: Fritzbox 7590

  • I always have the suspicion if I pull the power during copying of data, the data may be destroyed or the HDD may be "killed" - is this to old fashioned???

    Well, two decades ago all we had were rather primitive filesystems who got inconsistent with unsafe shutdowns. Even if back then amount of data was measured in GB and not TB as today the needed fsck after such a crash or power failure took way too long (hours and sometimes even a day with a lot of small files) so businesses had no other choice than to use an UPS to avoid the filesystem check (fsck) since they couldn't afford the downtime.


    The issue was well understood and a lot of development happened: journals/logs and even checksummed CoW filesystems were developed so in theory neither power losses nor crashes are an issue any more. But prerequisite for this is write caches and so called write barriers working correctly. I tried to explain this recently here: Which energy efficient ARM platform to choose?


    With a SATA drive correctly implementing write barriers I wouldn't fear data corruption but USB drives are often a different story.


    Anyway: looking back me and my customers had more issues with UPS than without over the past 2.5 decades (but here in Germany power outages don't happen that often). Last occurrence only 2 months ago: attached a Smart-UPS 1500 via USB to a host where NUT runs. Then rebooted this host and at the same time the UPS simply cut power to all connected devices (obviously something went wrong with USB communication).


    Your setup is a rather power efficient one so I would assume adding the UPS to the mix overall consumption might be two times higher afterwards (see here)?

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    here in Germany power outages don't happen that often

    Power outages don't happen often around me either but plenty of other things can happen. Twice in the last year, electricians have accidentally turned off the wrong circuit breaker. Luckily, we did have a ups in the middle. And at least once, a datacenter tech has accidentally turned off both PDUs in a rack.


    While a UPS wouldn't help the second problem, I would gamble having a UPS than not having one. I wouldn't want to see a datacenter gamble without them either. If you are worried about UPS communications, don't use them. Let the UPS just be the buffer for short outages. At home, I have 8 systems plugged into my UPS. Not all of them have a way to receive the shutdown signal but at least they don't get incorrectly shutdown every time there is a small blip in power.


    Having the UPS is also handy if you want to move your server or rearrange cords. I can unplug my ups for a few minutes to move cables.


    Your setup is a rather power efficient one so I would assume adding the UPS to the mix overall consumption might be two times higher afterwards

    Not really a fair comparison. The bigger the UPS, the more consumption it is going to have (especially APC because they do self tests a lot). If you have a 10 watt system, you probably don't need a 950 VA UPS.

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  • Thanks for your detailed input. So I stop thinking about an UPS/USV...
    Your post makes me feel quite old...When I started with PCs everybody told me 20MB of HDD-space is more I will ever use...now I am working in the audio industry and my shelf is full with TB...


    But some habits never change. I always fear a loss of power when my main drive and the backup drive is attached.


    So thanks again.
    Best.
    Fabian

    MoBo: Fujitsu D3417-B
    CPU: Intel Celeron G3900
    RAM: Samsung DDR4 - 8 GB ECC
    Case: Fractal Design Node 80
    HDD: SSD 64GB (System), 2*3TB+1*4TB (Data) + 1*4TB (Parity). UnionFS + Snapraid
    OMV 4
    Router: Fritzbox 7590

  • Power outages don't happen often around me either but plenty of other things can happen. Twice in the last year, electricians have accidentally turned off the wrong circuit breaker. Luckily, we did have a ups in the middle. And at least once, a datacenter tech has accidentally turned off both PDUs in a rack.
    While a UPS wouldn't help the second problem, I would gamble having a UPS than not having one. I wouldn't want to see a datacenter gamble without them either. If you are worried about UPS communications, don't use them. Let the UPS just be the buffer for short outages. At home, I have 8 systems plugged into my UPS. Not all of them have a way to receive the shutdown signal but at least they don't get incorrectly shutdown every time there is a small blip in power.


    Having the UPS is also handy if you want to move your server or rearrange cords. I can unplug my ups for a few minutes to move cables.


    Not really a fair comparison. The bigger the UPS, the more consumption it is going to have (especially APC because they do self tests a lot). If you have a 10 watt system, you probably don't need a 950 VA UPS.

    I think I skipped the idea of an UPS. But if not, which UPS would you recommend for a small system like mine?
    Thanks.
    Fabian

    MoBo: Fujitsu D3417-B
    CPU: Intel Celeron G3900
    RAM: Samsung DDR4 - 8 GB ECC
    Case: Fractal Design Node 80
    HDD: SSD 64GB (System), 2*3TB+1*4TB (Data) + 1*4TB (Parity). UnionFS + Snapraid
    OMV 4
    Router: Fritzbox 7590

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    which UPS would you recommend for a small system like mine?

    I have this for my pfsense system (tiny amd system) and cable modem. Works very well. Even has ECO button for people really worried about every watt. https://www.amazon.com/CyberPo…gateway&sr=8-2-spons&th=1

    omv 7.0-32 sandworm | 64 bit | 6.5 proxmox kernel

    plugins :: omvextrasorg 7.0 | kvm 7.0.9 | compose 7.0.9 | cputemp 7.0 | mergerfs 7.0.3


    omv-extras.org plugins source code and issue tracker - github


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  • I have this for my pfsense system (tiny amd system) and cable modem. Works very well. Even has ECO button for people really worried about every watt. https://www.amazon.com/CyberPo…gateway&sr=8-2-spons&th=1

    Sadly I can not find this in Germany...
    But as I said - I will skip this first.
    Thanks.
    Fabian

    MoBo: Fujitsu D3417-B
    CPU: Intel Celeron G3900
    RAM: Samsung DDR4 - 8 GB ECC
    Case: Fractal Design Node 80
    HDD: SSD 64GB (System), 2*3TB+1*4TB (Data) + 1*4TB (Parity). UnionFS + Snapraid
    OMV 4
    Router: Fritzbox 7590

  • I wouldn't want to see a datacenter gamble without them either.


    A datacenter is something entirely different since here we're talking about 'business continuity' or availability. At home people use UPS for the same reason they use RAID: since they can afford it now and since they got the impression it would be a good idea and 'every business did it this way a decade ago'. IMO at home users should focus on data safety, data integrity and data consistency while they do not have to care about data availability. And with today's filesystems and correctly working hardware data consistency shouldn't be an issue any more even with power losses.


    If you are worried about UPS communications, don't use them. Let the UPS just be the buffer for short outages


    Oh, this was just a recent failure example. I've seen UPS failing in so many ways the last decades, e.g. going offline when mains is back (overwhelmed by the load of booting servers, we had to connect them in groups of 2-3 to the UPS) or not realizing that power is back and then doing an emergency shutdown of all machines half an hour later (stuff like this is even mentioned in German BSI 'handbooks': https://www.bsi.bund.de/DE/The…content/g/g04/g04001.html).


    An UPS by itself is simply another single point of failure and since we try to avoid those... critical systems have redundant PSUs and only one of them is connected to the UPS but the other to mains. Or they are low-powered servers with a DC UPS like an Olimex Lime2.

  • One more thing to consider.....


    If the computer(s) you wish to protect with a UPS have power supplies with their own DSP (Digital Signal Processor, usually only found on high-end PSU's), make certain the UPS you purchase has a true sine wave output, and not a stepped output.


    Some power supplies with DSP's can handle a stepped wave, but most cannot, and you risk damage to them.


    APC UPS's come in two basic forms, those with true sine wave output (which are more expensive) and those with stepped output. I believe CyberPower UPS's are the same, but I am not familiar with their offerings.

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    APC UPS's come in two basic forms, those with true sine wave output (which are more expensive) and those with stepped output. I believe CyberPower UPS's are the same, but I am not familiar with their offerings.

    Yes, they have both. All UPSes have some sort of stepped wave. The expensive ones just have smaller steps to smooth the wave.


    IMO at home users should focus on data safety, data integrity and data consistency while they do not have to care about data availability. And with today's filesystems and correctly working hardware data consistency shouldn't be an issue any more even with power losses.

    Data availability isn't really why I have UPSes. Although I hate when my kids can't watch TV/do internet things and I am gone with no way to fix it. It is about hardware lifespan and time savings. Having the power yanked from hardware is hard on it. Anything running hot will have to rely on passive cooling to cool down. Many things nowadays rely almost entirely on active cooling. If I have video encodings runnning, I hate to start them over. If you have VMs and/or dockers, it can be a time consuming to get them running again. And just because hardware and filesystems handle it better, doesn't mean apps do especially databases. In my opinion, protecting your server against unexpected, hard shutdowns is part of keeping data safe.

    omv 7.0-32 sandworm | 64 bit | 6.5 proxmox kernel

    plugins :: omvextrasorg 7.0 | kvm 7.0.9 | compose 7.0.9 | cputemp 7.0 | mergerfs 7.0.3


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  • In my opinion, protecting your server against unexpected, hard shutdowns is part of keeping data safe


    If it would be that easy. Based on my own and many others' experiences UPS is like RAID. Works fine all the time until you need it. Then you need to be prepared to run in all sorts of comical failures.


    Just like with RAID (or any kind of complex storage topology) this stuff needs constant testing. Nobody does this at home and as such it's more or less for a good feeling only.


    2 months ago I spent a whole weekend in a server room with a colleague testing through all possible power related issues. One UPS cut power to all connected devices due to USB misbehavior, the older Smart-UPS 3000 RM XL reported being able to run on battery for 45 minutes and after 7 min game over (nobody there knew that these things need periodic calibration), at least both UPS could cope with a 'cold start' (all devices connected and mains came back -- but as already said: almost all devices have redundant PSUs and we only connect one of them to the UPS).

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    If it would be that easy. Based on my own and many others' experiences UPS is like RAID. Works fine all the time until you need it. Then you need to be prepared to run in all sorts of comical failures.

    You must run into some of the worst luck ever. I used to do the IT work for a school that had well over 100 UPSes due to power problems of an old building. Other than batteries needing replacing, I never had a single problem in six years with them. I have had three at home for close to 15 years. They were APC until I replaced them with cyberpower to get additional capacity and cheaper batteries. No problems with any of them. I have seen people have many, many more issues with raid than a UPS.


    Just like with RAID (or any kind of complex storage topology) this stuff needs constant testing. Nobody does this at home and as such it's more or less for a good feeling only.

    I unplug mine every few months for cleaning around it.

    the older Smart-UPS 3000 RM XL reported being able to run on battery for 45 minutes and after 7 min game over (nobody there knew that these things need periodic calibration)

    It didn't need calibration. It needed new batteries. And that isn't a home user unit. It is huge. The old APCs never reported run time accurately either. Not sure if the new ones do.

    omv 7.0-32 sandworm | 64 bit | 6.5 proxmox kernel

    plugins :: omvextrasorg 7.0 | kvm 7.0.9 | compose 7.0.9 | cputemp 7.0 | mergerfs 7.0.3


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  • This is an interesting discussion...and let me overthink my decision...
    :)
    Thanks both of you. I am really enjoying it.
    Best.
    Fabian

    MoBo: Fujitsu D3417-B
    CPU: Intel Celeron G3900
    RAM: Samsung DDR4 - 8 GB ECC
    Case: Fractal Design Node 80
    HDD: SSD 64GB (System), 2*3TB+1*4TB (Data) + 1*4TB (Parity). UnionFS + Snapraid
    OMV 4
    Router: Fritzbox 7590

  • I unplug mine every few months for cleaning around it

    Well, we use NUT to send commands like upscmd 3000xl test.battery.start.deep. Afterwards we got a more realistic battery.runtime: 540 (9 min) reported.

    It didn't need calibration. It needed new batteries


    Batteries have been exchanged in 2017 but the software of this old UPS didn't show it (see also the weird battery.runtime value in the beginning).

    Code
    battery.mfr.date: 2009/06/20
    battery.runtime: 2460
    ...
    ups.mfr: American Power Conversion
    ups.mfr.date: 2009/06/20
    ups.model: Smart-UPS 3000 RM XL


    Anyway: we cooperate with 3 different systems houses for hardware stuff and it was not me who established the 'only one PSU connected to UPS' rule :)

  • PowerWalker VI 650VA IEC 360W UPS is what I use, it holds 2 HP Microservers (in my sig) and a QNAP NAS for over an hour or longer. It appears to work with NUT, but doesn't(it is on the hardware compatibility list). I use it as I have had the odd power cut where the breaker trips in the box, which is fabulous when I am not in. Its been running over 18months now and been pretty good.


    I have (had) a more expensive one to support my main PC (FSP 2Kw) and that failed totally after 15months, tripped main circuit breaker in the house out.


    The PowerWalker was so cheap I bought another to stick my ISP router on as a power cut knocks the router out totally and I found the time for the DSL to sync back in ranged from 15 minutes to two days in one case.


    Thankfully power outages are not common where I live, but for me common enough to require a UPS.

    HP N54L Microserver, 20Gb Intel SSD, 4Gb RAM runing OMV 4.X
    HP N54L Microserver 20Gb Intel SSD, 8Gb RAM running OMV 4.X
    and loads of other PC's and NAS... OMV by far the best....
    (P.S. I hate Windows 10, 8.1, 8, 7 Vista, XP, 2K, ME, 98se, 98 and 95 - I have lost hours of my life to this windows virus)

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