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We have reason to believe that were getting voltage spikes in our infrastructure. Demonstrated by our remote power controllers receiving over voltages on their regulator pins causing them to fail. Also, an influx in amount of bad equipment after power blips.

UPS in our environment is not possible. But line conditioners are an option.

EDIT: UPS is not possible due to the nature of equipment we have in our "datacenter". I could be considered more of a lab environment that we manage ourselves where no single piece of equipment is critical. The amount of power required does not justify the cost.

Datacenter experts/electrician/anyone with experience, is there any viable methods to measuring voltage spikes on our incoming lines? Or somehow prove over voltage is causing issues?

cheesesticksricepuck
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  • Have you talked to the people who manage the datacenter facility? – ewwhite Jan 05 '15 at 13:21
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    Why is a UPS not possible? That's usually *required* equipment for critical infrastructure these days... – Nathan C Jan 05 '15 at 13:34
  • To echo Nathan's comment, with the price and variety of UPSes these days, there's really no excuse for not having one. I have one in front of a home desktop that's several years old. Not having even a small one with a few minutes capacity in front of your datacenter gear to handle these spikes and such is inexcusable. That's the problem you need to fix. – HopelessN00b Jan 05 '15 at 14:44
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    @NathanC - Most datacenters provide power to customer equipment via industrial class UPS systems. Having a UPS in the customer rack is in most cases redundant, unneccessary and forbidden. These are an example - http://www.emersonnetworkpower.com/en-US/Products/ACPower/LargeFacilityUPS/Pages/default.aspx – joeqwerty Jan 05 '15 at 14:46
  • @rainereality: The first question I'd have for your datacenter operators is whether or not they're providing conditioned power via UPS to your equipment. If they are then you've got a different problem. If they aren't then you ought to be looking at moving to a datacenter that does. Secondly, have you spoken to the datacenter operators about this? If not, why not? If so, what did they have to say? – joeqwerty Jan 05 '15 at 14:58
  • @joeqwerty We are managing this "datacenter" environment ourselves. It could be considered a large lab environment where no single machine is mission critical, but if a large quantity goes off testing starts failing due to lack of available resources. UPS is not possible because of the cost and amount of power required and the lack of critical resources. – cheesesticksricepuck Jan 05 '15 at 15:06
  • Add some voltage regulation which will protect you equipment. A UPS usually provides it in addition to battery backup but there are straight AVR (automatic voltage regulation) units available. Often also called a line conditioner. – Brian Jan 05 '15 at 15:47
  • Note that you can usually buy an AVR UPS for the price you'll be charged for power logging. Power loggers are used to verify power quality but it's usually a 1 time thing or when there is a breaker issue. Buying one on your own will run you about $3000. If cost won't cover a UPS, I can't imagine them covering something a few hundred dollars in AVS/UPS expenses would resolve – Jim B Jan 05 '15 at 17:34

1 Answers1

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There are ways to monitor the power coming in but the question becomes price and you would still probably need an electrician to do some of the work.

If you are looking for something short term have an electrician connect a logging power meter to your supply side. I have not worked with these directly but I know electricians who have, Fluke makes some that can record power usage for a month and generate reports to show you what is happening. I do not know the cost of new units off hand.

A more permanent solution would be to install a monitoring system that monitors power at different locations and reports back to a central data collection system like the systems used in larger data centers. I am familiar with the APC Data Center Expert software and rack PDU's however I know other companies make comparable hardware and software but these systems get very expensive fast.

I would greatly recommend the first option since purchasing a UPS is cost prohibitive would lead me to believe monitored power distribution units and a data collection software would be out of the question.

Zero
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  • Thank you, this is the kind of information that will be useful for me. I will ask our electricians if we can get option 1 installed. I had no idea there were even these kinds of solutions available. If you have any additional info that would be appreciated. But this should be enough to get me started! Thanks again! – cheesesticksricepuck Jan 05 '15 at 17:02