August 18th, 2009
Whether you're a home consumer, a large corporation or anything in between, it is essential that power protection be part of your technology plan and not an afterthought. Electrical power is the one constant that all computer, network equipment, and home audio equipment rely upon. Protection from power related damage to computer and network equipment can be the difference between having your valuable resources available when you need them and a network wide outage.
The most frequent power issues that organizations experience are; Power failure, Voltage sag, Voltage spike, Under-voltage (brownout), Over-voltage, Line noise, Frequency variation, Switching transient and Harmonic distortion. Electrical current is not always constant and due to the huge investment organizations make in information technology it's only logical to protect those investments from potential damage. The industry standard in power protection is called an Uninterruptible Power Supply or UPS.
A UPS, also known as a battery back-up, provides emergency power to connected equipment by supplying power from a separate source when utility power is not available. It differs from an auxiliary or emergency power system or standby generator, which does not provide instant protection from a momentary power interruption. A UPS however can be used to provide uninterrupted power to equipment, typically for 5-15 minutes until an auxiliary power supply can be turned on, utility power restored, or equipment safely shut down.
A common question that IT professionals get when it comes to UPS devices is why just 5-15 minutes of auxiliary power? It's really a two part answer. First, most power related issues are a very short duration usually a few seconds to a few minutes. Major power outages for extended periods are rare. The 5-15 minutes a UPS will afford an organization is usually sufficient time to travel to the location of the server(s) and network equipment and power them off safely. Second, is the more time of uninterrupted power an organization requires the higher the cost of the UPS device. It is important to balance high availability vs. cost.
In the end appropriate power protection should always be part of a technology plan and your Network administrator(s) and MIS department should always be part of the planning process to ensure the appropriate power protection is in place that will balance availability and cost.
