Lots of people have them either under their desks or hidden back in the server room. They can get expensive and sometimes cost as much as a lower end computer. The UPS can save the day in a few diverse ways. In this short blog post we’ll talk about what a UPS is, why we need one in every office, and a few of the options you might want to think about before buying one.
A UPS stands for a Uninterrupted Power Supply. This basically means it’s a big old’ battery that sits beside your workstation or network system and in the event of a surge, or power outage, it instantly flips over to battery power. This saves your devices and stops it from improperly shutting down and losing important company data.
We should probably tell you why you don’t want your computer to just randomly be shut down all the time, lots of people overlook this as well. A few things can happen to your device if not shutdown properly.
- Files may be written incompletely: When you abruptly turn off the system, the files that the system has been writing may be incomplete resulting in loss of data.
- Data corruption: All those unsaved data and programs can lead to data corruption.
- Forced shut down during updates can cause damage to the system.
I know what you’re thinking. You hit the hard shutdown button all the time and your computer are fine! Well, the truth is it probably will be fine, until that one time when you absolutely need your system to be working. When you need all the data from a specific project in the right places not corrupted. Usually it’s a simple fix, maybe a re-install of an operating system, a new hard drive, usually with today’s technology data can be recovered. But why put yourself through the stress of all that.
That’s where the UPS comes in. You can get varied sizes of batteries in your UPS depending on how many devices you have at your workstation. If you just have a laptop, chances are you really don’t need one. Most laptops have an internal battery that can deal with a short power outage. So, you might just want to investigate a surge protecting power bar. Just to have something between your device and the wall outlet. But if you have a PC that is plugged into the wall. It would be wise to put a UPS in between.
Different UPS options come with smaller size batteries like mentioned earlier. But you can get a UPS that also has a management card built in. Now this is an extra cost, what’s important about it is that the management card has an ethernet port on the back, allowing the UPS to connect to a network. You’re probably thinking, “I am not surfing Instagram on my UPS, It doesn’t even have a screen?!” Well your 100% correct. This is mainly for someone who has a Managed Service Provider, like Skycomp Solutions, managing every device in the office. Having the management card in the UPS makes it possible for the managed service provider to tell exactly when your buildings power went out, sends them a notification so they can start the backup process of any important items, and they can let you know all data is safe, and all devices are safely running on battery power.
“My Office Power has gone out a few times, I haven’t lost any data, and I keep all my files in a safe cloud storage.”
If you find yourself saying the above statement. A UPS is probably not right for you. As long as you shutdown properly, maintain a file backup system, and have a plan for when the power goes out and you might need a new device. Most managed service providers will request that you get a few for the office, you’re going through the entire process of making sure data is secure, and backed up, for peace of mind, and data that is safe from all sides even a lightning strike, consider getting a UPS for your office.
If you want to know a little bit more about what a UPS is and this blog post didn’t do enough for you, you can always watch the video located at the top of the page.