Tell TechWeekEurope All About Your UPS

The humble UPS (uninterruptible power supply) could be the most important piece of kit in your data centre if there is a disaster. Our survey aims to shed some light on how TechWeekEurope readers see their UPS.

Technology to keep data centres going in times of disaster, have been around for a very long time. When people first started to rely on computers, they quickly realised they couldn’t always trust their electricity supplies, so they worked out ways to save their data in the event of a sudden power outage.

UPS a daisy

You can only store so much energy, however, so UPSs are designed to deliver power for a few minutes, while the data is safely stored and (hopefully) the IT equipment can be switched to a different power source. Large data centres will have back-up power such as diesel generators or fuel cells.

Mostly, UPS systems are dull boxes of batteries, but some use more exciting technology, such as a rotating flywheel (below)which stores kinetic energy, ready to deliver it as power when required.

There are questions though: how much energy does your UPS waste, and how do you integrated with increasingly virtual IT kit? Can it grow with your data centre, and can you fix it if it goes wrong?

We want to know how you choose your UPS systems, and what’s involved in caring for them. Please take this survey, so we can keep our finger on the pulse of the data centre.

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