A couple of months ago, I bought a UPS for my server at home. I’m running more remote services on it and figure that anything I can add to protect it is worth while. I bought an Eaton 5115 500 Watt tower model. Only the “Powerware” branded model is listed on the NUT support page but I was banking on the newer model being compatible. For those out there wondering: yes it is.
- Install NUT and then configure as per the instructions given here here. For the Eaton 5115 connected via USB, bcmxcp_usb is the correct driver. On Ubuntu this was just a matter of apt-get’ing the “nut” package and modifying ups.conf, upsd.conf, upsd.users, upsmon.conf and nut.conf as specified on the previously linked documentation page.
- Disconnect and reconnect the USB connection from the server to the UPS (I had to do this to get everything working).
- Test that everything worked by running:
$ upsc { ups name }
Where { ups name } is the name chosen for the UPS in ups.conf.
As for the UPS itself: it seems pretty good. I was concerned when I first plugged it in as the fan whirred quite loudly at full speed for a few minutes – but then it slowed down to a very quiet speed. The voltage regulation feature has kicked in a few times (my line is supposed to be a nominal 240 Volts but more often floats around 250 Volts) which I thought was pretty neat.
I haven’t got figures on battery length… might edit this when I do.