Smart UPS Connectivity: what it is and why you need it

The electricity supply in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore is very reliable, much more so than in many countries in East Asia, but outages do occur, and the shift to renewables is increasing the risk, as are more extreme weather events.

Also, there can be other problems about which the average user would be unaware: brownouts (sudden voltage drops) spikes (sudden voltage surges) and noise (high frequency signals on the supply line).

Loss of power can bring a business to an immediate halt. The other problems can temporarily or permanently disable vital and costly equipment.

An uninterruptible power supply (UPS) can ensure continued business operation and protect business-critical equipment against failure or irregularity of mains electricity supply, but a smart, remotely managed UPS can do much more to protect vital IT equipment. And it can reduce, or eliminate, the need for on-site IT expertise.

This brandpost will provide an overview of these functions and detail a new offering from Schneider Electric that makes them more accessible than ever.

Smart, Remotely Managed UPS: More than just Backup Power

At its most basic a UPS will ensure clean power to connected equipment and a seamless transition to battery power when mains power fails, until its battery becomes discharged. For many organisations and applications these basic capabilities are insufficient. A smart UPS can provide a number of other important functions.

• If the length of a power outage exceeds the capacity of the UPS battery all connected equipment can be properly shutdown before power is lost, and equipment can be correctly rebooted when power is restored. As the battery becomes depleted non-critical equipment can be shutdown first to enable vital equipment to be powered for longer.
• When IT equipment malfunctions powering off and rebooting can often restore normal operation: this can be done by a smart UPS.

Large organisations have many facilities, some large some small. Many might me so small as to make the presence of on-site IT expertise prohibitively expensive. In addition to providing power supply security, a smart, remotely managed, UPS can enable an offsite technician to perform many critical functions that would normally require them to be on site. These include.

• Rebooting IT equipment remotely (this can solve many IT problems).
• Viewing and downloading equipment log data to identify issues before they result in failure.
• Scheduling shutdown and rebooting of connected equipment to save power and increase security.
• Providing immediate notification of critical issues to a remote operator.
• Providing data to an oversight expert monitoring system that integrates other information sources such as surveillance video and creates a unified view of a complex IT environment that is accessible from anywhere.

Schneider Electric Smart UPS Products and Monitoring Software/Services

Schneider Electric offers a range of Smart UPS products that support remote management and monitoring of the UPS and connected equipment. They deliver all the benefits described above, and more. They are multiple models with the features and capacities to suit a wide range of requirements.

Schneider Electric’s Smart-UPS On-Line products are available to support loads from 1kVA to 20kVA and can be rack or tower mounted. They can be configured with multiple battery packs to provide backup power for mission-critical systems during long power outages.

And when backup batteries are depleted their inbuilt PowerChute™ Network Shutdown management software will gracefully shutdown the operating systems of supported equipment.

They can be programmed to shutdown non-critical equipment to conserve battery power for critical systems in the event of a prolonged power outage.

The Schneider Electric EcoStruxure™ IT SmartConnect cloud service provides remote power monitoring, customisable email notifications, remote diagnostics, and UPS firmware updates – all via a web portal.

Get Remote Systems Monitoring via SE Smart UPS

Schneider Electric’s Smart-UPS for loads greater than 5kVA come equipped with a network management card to support all these features for remote monitoring and control of the UPS and connected equipment but require a licence to the EcoStruxure IT Expert software to enable all the features described above.

However, as a special offer for a limited time only, Schneider Electric is offering a bundle comprising the UPS, a network management card and a one-year licence to the EcoStruxure IT Expert software, for every model in the range, including sub 5kVA products.

Contact Schneider Electric today to learn how you can get power protection and monitoring and control of critical IT systems – all from a remote location.