Q&A: Use Knowledge Of Power Events To Provide Best UPS Coverage

By Yolanda Hernandez, Chloride, NA

Power protection is so critical to a business, and yet, its importance is quite often minimized since customers don't realize how much they need it until power fails. Power protection is like an insurance policy, providing peace of mind should something unexpected happen. Regardless of the market, the cost of down time can be detrimental to business — from lost revenue, interrupted customer services, lost customer and financial data, to breaches in secured networks. Even minute of downtime is costly relative to sales and employee productivity, which is why it's so important to ensure that critical systems and infrastructures are protected from power failures.

The run time a UPS provides is the number of minutes that UPS can provide power from the battery for a given load level. Since driving more equipment requires more power from the battery, driving more load will result in shorter run time. A UPS with a larger battery, or with an add-on battery pack, will provide longer run time for a given load size. Run time is critically important because it tells you how long a power outage the UPS can handle before the battery runs out. Most UPS manufacturers will provide tables that show the typical run times for a model based on the loads it has to handle.

One of the other important components to a UPS system is the ability to connect all UPS devices via a management and monitoring tool that enables the end user or VAR to manage systems efficiently. Sometimes this is overlooked. Some monitoring systems have the ability to send messaged to PDAs, making it more convenient for IT professionals to act quickly and make timely decisions for their customers.