this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2024
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I'm down to the last few hours of discounts here. I need to get my NAS and my server onto a UPS months ago. Both are already set to come back on when power restores. We rarely have power outages and have solar panels (no house battery though), so a full outage is even rarer.

I understand that a UPS can send a shutdown signal when power is lost. Is this a universal standard or format for this? If so, what keywords should i use when searching for compatible products? My father told me to look for one with Ethernet ports. I just want to make sure everything is compatible. I go out of town occasionally and as well as preventing data loss, I also need everything to go down and come back up automatically so I don't have to call a friend, neighbor, or my spouse to go mess with stuff for me.

UPS brands considered (alternatives welcome): APC, Cyberpower

Systems protected, Synology DS 220+ & BeeLink MiniPC running Debian 12.


Also, for anyone who has helped me out previously in my self-hosted journey, thank you! Things are going great and I have a few useful docker images running various services and have set up grub btrfs snapshots to easily fix my screwups. This community has been incredibly helpful.

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[–] [email protected] 44 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

There isn't a standard that is broadly-adopted, but NUT (https://networkupstools.org/) has reverse-engineered drivers for nearly every UPS out there, usually each brand has their standard so as long as the brand is supported it will work. (NUT is also what TrueNAS, Synology, QNAP, etc use internally for their UPS support)

I've had good luck with using NUT with APC UPSes (both consumer models and buying used enterprise rack-mount models).

One cool thing you can do with NUT is share the UPS state over the network, so that multiple machines can respond to the power state instead of just the machine that is plugged in via USB directly.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 5 months ago

NUT works with many UPS models and provides monitoring and control

https://networkupstools.org/

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

If for some reason you don't like the look of NUT, and you get an APC UPS (and maybe some others?), there is always apcupsd. It will run shell scripts upon certain events, etc. Old, simple, works.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I'm using apcupsd for my server, even wrote a little script to pull wattage off the apc and report it in byobu's status bar. Anytime I ssh into my server I can see current wattage (usually about 55W for 4 spinning rust drives, 2 SSDs plus the router).

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago
[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

cyberpower ups has their own utility on their website called powerpanel. versions exist for windows, linux and macos.

apcupsd for apc units is found in many distributions, including debian. for synology, this might lead you in the right direction: https://old.reddit.com/r/synology/comments/gtkjam/use_synology_nas_as_ups_server_to_safely_power/

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The Linux one only works on some architectures. Notably, you can't run it on a raspberry pi.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

You can run it on a Pi via Box64. Source: I did it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

The UPS driver that delivers to my home office a bag of electronic goodies every week couldn’t care less about what OS I use. I mean I even tried to tell him about all the awesome Minty Pops and Arches and all he had to say was “that Fedora looks fucking dope, bro. Say, do you listen to Hannah Montana?”

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

I use a USB connection to my UPS for the shutdown signal not Ethernet

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I just bought a random UPS at MediaMarkt back in the day in Poland and calculated that it would be able to power all the CCTV cams, the CCTV recorder, a raspberry pi and the modem which is connected to a long range WiFi antenna for at least half an hour. This worked very well for a couple of years until the battery gave up. The one I had had a ethernet port but I never bothered to set it up to send the signal.

Mine was running at my parents summer house in Poland while my parents live in Germany and I in Sweden and now in Korea, so if something breaks down it's down for up to a year until someone goes there to fix it.

Right now everything is down, my dad was there a couple of month ago and said that a marten chew up the Ethernet cables. Sadly my dad couldn't fix it so now I hope I will be able to get there during Christmas.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Yup, batteries need to be replaced every 3-5 years. Make sure you account for that cost when purchasing.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I've been able to control a consumer-grade CyberPower UPS for just my modem/router via a Raspberry Pi using Box64 to emulate the linux command line software for communicating with the UPS. I've never had any issues, and it had pretty okay documentation. You just connect it to a host PC via USB.

https://www.cyberpowersystems.com/product/ups/standby/st625u/

This is the one, nothing special.

As you can see though, source, rpm, and deb versions are available. If a low-power consumer grade one like this has Linux support, I'd daresay most of them do. Like I said, I never had trouble.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Eaton is your best bet for compatibility in the consumer market.

https://networkupstools.org/stable-hcl.html

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

NUT worked fine on everything I thrown at it. Both nice branded ones (Eaton...) And cheapo UPSs unbranded.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Was very confused why this was being asked. Was not aware there was a mechanism to send a shutdown signal. Thanks.