If you live in the North East, you’re no stranger to electrical power issues.  Fluctuations in power can definitely take its toll on your hardware.  Servers, workstations and network equipment are essentially always on.  In today’s world they usually can’t afford to be off.

Providing your hardware with proper protection from these power failures and surges is the single most important thing you can do to protect your equipment from being damaged.  Surge protection is just as important as having a recent tested backup of your system ready to deploy.

Let’s take a look at what’s out there and what your current set up may look like.

Power Strips VS. Surge Protectors VS. UPS (battery backup)

First off, we should clear up some commonly misused terminology.  Each power provider (surge protector, power strip, UPS) is different and should not be confused. The misconception may end up being very costly!

Power Strips – These are essentially just extra outlets. Unless specifically noted, they carry no surge protection nor do they provide any type of battery backup.  These are often used in areas with workstations where a printer, monitor, speakers, PC and phone all need to share 1-2 outlets.  In the IT world we often try to shy away from these. While they may have their own circuit breaker, they will not protect against power fluctuations that can often harm the sensitive hardware connected.

Surge Protectors – These look like power strips, but specifically state they are “Surge Suppressors” or “Surge Protectors”.  These are what should be used to protect your computer hardware.  Their protection levels are often rated based on joules or voltage. Think of a surge protector as a pressure blow off valve for electrical current. Voltage is that current.  When the current gets too high, excess will get dispersed while the devices connected to the surge protector will get their steady flow of power. The higher the joule or voltage rating, the larger power fluctuation the device will be able to handle.  420 Joules is the recommended minimum to support a workstation, monitor, small deskjet printer and another small device.

UPS – Uninterrupted Power Supply (aka battery backups). These devices not only provide different levels of power fluctuation protection, but in case of a power outage will actually provide you with a small window of time to safely power down your devices.  In many cases this task of shutting down devices during the outage can be automated.  These UPS devices are essential to any business critical always on network device including servers, network storage devices and network routing gear.  If your mission critical devices aren’t on a battery backup, your organization is running the risk of making a bad situation worse.

These UPS’s vary in level of protection and price.  General small business, home office and consumer grade battery backup UPS devices can be purchased for under 100 dollars and safely protect thousands of dollars worth of equipment. These devices also come with software to automate the shutdown process in case of the event you’re not there to manually shut your gear down. For businesses with larger networks, full scale rack able UPS devices are available that are network capable for remote administration and automated task and notification scheduling.

If you require assistance or have any questions about protecting your computer equipment, please don’t hesitate to call our office at (516) 665-9313.