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recommended backup ups for new Mac Pro

A

alen655321

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 9, 2014
9
0
Hello all, I've been a long time lurker to these forums and am happy to report that my long wait for the new mac pro is almost over.

My question to the community is what kind of backup ups is recommended. I've been looking at an apc smt1500 (not sure if that's overkill) or a cyberpower cp1500pfclcd model. I've been told that a ups with pure sine wave is recommended for a mac pro. I work in the Animation industry and I'll be running a 6-core mac pro, pegasus2 R4, 27 inch monitor(will upgrade to 4k in future), a 24 inch wacom cintiq as secondary monitor, and speakers. Any suggestions are appreciated!
 
alen655321 said:
Hello all, I've been a long time lurker to these forums and am happy to report that my long wait for the new mac pro is almost over.

My question to the community is what kind of backup ups is recommended. I've been looking at an apc smt1500 (not sure if that's overkill) or a cyberpower cp1500pfclcd model. I've been told that a ups with pure sine wave is recommended for a mac pro. I work in the Animation industry and I'll be running a 6-core mac pro, pegasus2 R4, 27 inch monitor(will upgrade to 4k in future), a 24 inch wacom cintiq as secondary monitor, and speakers. Any suggestions are appreciated!
Click to expand...

My opinion is that the UPS models mentioned above are fine and ideal. You'll need to consider that you will also need to protect your Pegausus, monitor, plus other external devices specially you'll be storing very important animation files from your client. Though the new Mac Pro's PSU is 450 watts, you will be needing the extra watts allowance on your other devices. And a possibility that you will add more external devices in the future. The 1000watts coverage of the APC and the 900 watts coverage of Cyberpower are okay.
 
Thanks for the suggestions. After checking out the thread pertaining to the backup ups, it seems to be a toss-up between the cyberpower and apc smt1500. I'm leaning towards the cyberpower mainly due to the cost... But that doesn't mean that I won't change my mind last minute, before my mac pro arrives. ;)
 
alen655321 said:
Thanks for the suggestions. After checking out the thread pertaining to the backup ups, it seems to be a toss-up between the cyberpower and apc smt1500. I'm leaning towards the cyberpower mainly due to the cost... But that doesn't mean that I won't change my mind last minute, before my mac pro arrives. ;)
Click to expand...

I'm a big fan of APC - I have ten or so 5 kVa 240 volt units, many more 2.2 kVa units (some of them the "XL" models with extra-large batteries) many 1 kVa units. Every engineer in my group has a Smart UPS 1500 Va unit in their office.

Never had an issue with any of them, except for the expected battery replacement every 4-6 years.

The PowerChute UPS management software is great, but in a quick check it didn't look like it was supported on Apple OSX.

The first question to ask yourself is "how long do I want backup power?".

In my case, that's typically "5 minutes". The majority of power hits are under 1 minute, so 5 min runtime means that I almost never see a power outage. (One exception is that I have a 1500 Va unit for my TiVO and cable RF amp at home - it has an hour of runtime so that I can finish recording most any show even if without mains power.)

And as has been mentioned, be sure to count the power budget for monitors, external storage, and network gear (if storage is NAS) in the power budget.

I put my Fibre Channel arrays and FC switches on 15 minute backup. Some of the FC arrays take longer to reboot than the servers, and if the servers reboot before they can see the FC storage things are not pretty. Giving the storage longer runtime means that the 5-min to 15-min backups are recovered with any issues. Longer outages aren't helped - but that 10 minutes that the arrays run with any servers attached gives them plenty of time to flush any dirty caches to disk. (And the arrays have their own battery backups, so when the UPS runs out the array does a cache flush before doing a clean shutdown.)

And of course, critical stuff is on the UPS that has automatic backup diesel generators. That's probably outside the context of this thread, though.
 
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If you rate looking at APC vs Cyberpower, make sure you figure in the cost of replacement batteries and the warranty terms too.

You may find the APC SMT1000 is fine for your nMP needs.
 
Thanks again for all the feedback, guys! So based off my research, I ended up getting a different cyberpower ups model than the one I previously mentioned.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16842102145

The PR1500LCD seems to have a 3 yr warranty vs 2 with the apc smt1500. They both use the same kind of replaceable batteries. The cyber power has 1050 watts vs 980 with the apc and it's about $200 cheaper. As an added bonus, there seems to be better software integration/compatibility with the mac os based off what I saw on the cyberpower website.

I should be getting it today, so I'll keep you guys posted on how it goes!
 
Just wanted to post a follow up to my search for a good ups for my new mac pro. I've had the cyberpower pr1500lcd ups powering my new mac pro for about a week now and so far so good...I'm really surprised at how low the energy consumption of the new computer is. With everything running, the lcd on the ups shows 300 watts being used at a 28% capacity, and an hour battery run time!:eek:

Not to mention the ups is super quiet. I only hear a very faint pulsating sound every few seconds coming from the ups. I assume it's a capacitor in the unit and is totally normal.

Hope this helps anyone who is researching what ups to get.
 
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