Power Management

MICRO-MAINFRAME considers all aspect of power management for your servers and other related equipment such as switches, routers, and firewalls.

Power management fits into three broad categories:

1. House or utility power
2. Battery backup (UPS)
3. Generator backup

House or Utility power is the most basic need. It provides the best solution for low cost, generally available power and provides most of the electricity we all use from our homes to our businesses. Utility power, in its basic form, only provides the minimum for server operations. That aside, utility power may not be properly wired into you existing space or future space if not appropriately layed out. While most servers will run on standard 110v it's easy to overload if there are not ample outlets and circuits with sufficient amperage. In more complex scenarios where UPS's and Air conditioning units are involved higher voltages such as 208v and 240v are required in addition to higher amperage loading. Most of this requires proper planning and the inclusion of an electrical contractor. If a generator is to be utilized, circuits and breaker panels must be isolated as well.

Utility power provides the basis for operations but Servers and other equipment will not operate reliably without UPS protection. Data loss can occur with even the briefest utility outage, more extensive damage can occur with spikes, brownouts and other power fluctuations. UPS's provide power and filtering to ride through utility power issues. M-M recommends at least some form of UPS protection with or without monitoring and server shutdown capability. Our recommendation will be based on many factors including your budget, your backup systems, your risk/return, and location. Each and every client has a different mix of these issues. If you've ever been through a hurricane, flood, or other such disaster you, the client, probably have a feel for what it means to have no power. UPS's don't solve that problem as are short-term in nature, providing backup power in range of minutes to hours.

For more extensive protection, read as run time, Generators provide the only viable solution to the loss of utility power for the time beyond what you UPS can provide. Key issues related to Generators are simple, how long do you want to run and how many devices do you want to run. MICRO-MAINFRAME can help you sort through these issues and make appropriate recommendations on generator size, features, and implementation.