A Few Thoughts on Battery Backups

It's important to have good battery backup, especially for business servers, as a sudden power loss means sudden crash of the operating system. We've seen our share of corrupt Windows and other files, as well as physical hard drive damage, as a result of power failures. The solutions to such issues are rarely cheap, so battery backups can be thought of as an insurance policy against such events.

Something a little bothersome that I've seen lately, even in very knowledgeable technicians, is a penchant for under-powering their power backup solutions. Part of the confusion comes from the fact that UPSes (battery backup units, to the non-techie) are usually rated on VA (volt-amps), whereas computer products only list consumption of Watts. In my experience, it's best to multiply by 1.2 the total wattage of the systems being plugged into a UPS, to determine the number of VA the devices will consume.

So, for a basic server with a 500 watt power supply, many people would purchase a 500 VA UPS . . . and then wonder why their server still crashes violently every time the power goes out. 600VA would be a minimum size for protecting such a machine; I'd even size it a bit bigger at 750 or 850VA to allow enough time to make sure everything shuts down and/or to allow for other low-voltage peripherals (monitor, network switch, etc.).

APC, one of my favorite UPS manufacturers, has some nice resources, including an online UPS selector tool. It really helps think about issues like Watts-to-VA conversion and continuous uptime after the power goes out.

APC also has a nice computer power FAQ section on their web site. Here's one tip I found interesting and useful, regarding chaining surge suppressors off of UPSes. Interesting things to think about.

Microsoft Skydrive Online Storage: Free and Useful

Have you ever wanted to just put some files "online somewhere," either to have later or to share with someone? Google's got its offering, and if your company has a server there are always tools like FTP, but Microsoft's new Skydrive online file storage service might fill the need better than either of those.

The Pros:

• Clientless - just uses an internet browser - and works across OSes (not limited to Windows).
• 5GB of data, which is more than Google offers, and probably more than enough for most
• Sub-folder capability, to help separate and organize your files
• Shareability allows you to invite other people to retrieve the files, or even upload their own files. This is on a folder-by-folder level, and you can launch invitations to people for access to specific folders.
• Public Folder capability, to allow anonymous users to access files you designate as Public.

The Cons:

• You can only upload or download 5 files at a time, and no files bigger than 50MB. (I assume these rules are to attempt to thwart P2P music and movie sharing.)
• Transfer rates are fairly slow.
• You and your users must have a Windows Live login (except for folders made Public). No big deal for me, as it's free and pretty easy to sign up, and I've not seen a deluge of MS-related spam as a result.
• This is not a "corporate" solution, in that there is no guarantee that your data will be there tomorrow, there is no way to ensure/verify privacy and intrusion protection is not very strong.

In short, Skydrive is good for non-critical data that needs to be available quickly and easily, and perhaps even shared with mutliple users. It's definitely not a corporate solution, and is far from being compliant with standards like HIPAA . . . but it fills the "casual sharing" need very well.