The Shocking Truth about UPS!

What do you do when you have more electronics than power outlets? If you're like most of us, you will get for yourself an inexpensive power strip and keep plugging stuff in. This may work for your kitchen appliances, but with your computer equipment, you will want something more heavy duty.

The Problem of Waves
The reason you don't want your computer plugged into a puny power strip is because it cannot adequately protect your PC from power fluctuations. These fluctuations occur naturally in the transfer of power because electricity has a wave-like quality to it. You can see electricity waves in lightning bolts and plasma globes (that electric glass orb thing that you may have decorated your bedroom with in the 1980's). Electricity moves the same way in the copper wires that feed your appliances, but on a much smaller scale.

The problem with these power fluctuations is that they can cause destruction to your machine's electrical circuitry. Waves have the nature to physically wear down the objects they come in contact with. One example that we can take from nature is ocean waves hitting the beach. All of that sand on the shore was, at one time, part of a larger rock, like a seaside cliff, but thousands of years of ocean waves pounding the rocks broke it down into tiny pieces of sand.

Your electrical circuitry works the same way. You probably won't live long enough to see your computer turn into sand, but if you're planning to get a few years of use out of your machine, then you may start to see a decrease in performance. This deterioration may be due to power fluctuations coming from your PC being directly plugged into a power strip or electrical outlet that fails to regulate the waves.

Stop the Waves with UPS
The best solution for this problem is a heavier power supply tool called a Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS). This device does exactly what the name suggests; it regulates the power supply so that your computers are fed a constant stream of power instead of being bombarded by waves of electricity.

The benefit of plugging your electronics into a UPS device is that it will extend the life of your mission-critical computer equipment like your workstations, servers, and NAS devices. There are a variety of different types of UPS devices. The most common model uses a battery or a flywheel to provide extra power during the low parts of the wave. A UPS also has filters that will prevent damage from the higher parts of the electrical waves.

The Danger of Power Outages
Another danger of electricity that can cause serious damage to your computer equipment are power outages. Even the small outages that make your lights suddenly turn off and on again are enough to do some serious damage to the insides of your PC. A UPS device will protect your equipment from sudden power losses by feeding your computers a steady stream of power from a built in battery.

In the event of a power outage, a UPS device will be able to provide power in as fast as 25 milliseconds, and different models of UPS devices can provide power for equipment plugged into it for different amounts of time. This can range from a few minutes (long enough for you to fire up the backup generator), to a few hours. This UPS technology has even been used to backup entire power plants in cities prone to regular power outages.

Any business that's serious about protecting their data from a natural disaster causing a power loss (a sudden power loss can wreak havoc on your servers by deleting your data), will want to utilize a UPS device and a Backup and Disaster Recovery (BDR) solution from SMART Services. A BDR solution will automatically backup the data on your company's servers to the cloud so it can be virtualized and accessed in the event that your business ever experiences a devastating disaster--like a real lightning strike! Call us at 586 258-0650 for more information!