[vox-tech] Why not APC? (wasTripp Lite UPS)

[Bill Broadley]

On Wed, Jan 30, 2002 at 09:35:07AM -0800, speck@blkmtn.org wrote:
> Good for you.  A UPS is a nice thing. 
> 
> Why are APC units to be avoided?  I have used any number of them in the server closet in the past and I have not encountered any difficulty that I recall.  A friend has a nice one that he bought here: http://auction.apcc.com/ a while ago and has served him well.
> 
> -sp

The consome ones SUCK, we have piles of them dead at ITD, seems like
other large organizations admins have similar opinions.  They seem to
get wonky, sometimes disasmbling them, letting them hang out overnight,
and putting them back together will let em work for another few months.
I asked the APC tech why, and he said, "well, they are like that".

I offered to write an APC driver since at the time I was thinking
of standardizing on them at Math (150 machines or so).  They faxed
me a NDA, I said no thanks I'll figure it out, it's pretty simple
only a few chars go back and forth.  They then threatened to sue.

Someone I know did the same thing, posted it widely, and APC after
realizing it was helpless switched to "promoting linux", last I checked
though even though it's "endorsed" it's unsupported and doesn't support
much of the functionality available in the hardware.

I'd recommend best, they give away source code for free, seem
to be better built then most.  When I asked about a high end
model (datacenter) they sent me docs on how to monitor internal
temperature, various statistics, even the wave form shape
that triggered the outage.  Very cool stuff.

Admittedly I just bought 4 top of the line 2200 VA or similar rack
mount APC ups's, I'm hoping the highend stuff is built better, and
it's maximally compatible with the VERY cool powerchute plus boxes
that control 8 power outlets via www, snmp, or command line (I think).

In any case it's a datapoint.  Seems like most consumer APC's around
here last 15-24 months.

--
Bill Broadley
Mathematics/Institute of Theoretical Dynamics
UC Davis