UPS (power-backup) boxes for Sun servers ??

[Eric Ho]

Has anyone out there been using those UPS (Uninterruptible power system)
boxes for Sun servers ?  In particular, I want to get opinions about the
UPS boxes from Elgar (in San Diego) -- e.g. how reliable they're for Sun
servers (they claim that their boxes will nwall(8) messages out to users
upon power outage and then do an shutdown(8) within 10mins if the power
doesn't come back up and when the power comes back up, it'll reboot the
server and recharge its batteries again -- it uses up a serial port which
connects the server to the UPS box and some kernel changes).

I've 2 servers (3/180 + 4/280) -- each has 2 SMD drives (one has 2 eagles,
and one has 1 eagle + 1 hitachi 892meg).  One has a 1/2-inch tape drive
and one as a 1/4-inch tape drive.  Also, one has a 16meg ram expansion
from clearpoint and an ALM-1 board.

It'll be great if someone can share some of their experiences using this
kind of boxes on Sun server equipments.

Thanks in advance.

Eric Ho  
Princeton University
eho at clarity.princeton.edu