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Servers: Redundant Power Supplies

M

Manu

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 3, 2003
Messages
203
Hey everyone, I just wanted to get your opinion on redundant power supplies in servers. Are they a must? Any negative aspect of having one? Take it or leave it?

Its been a point of much debate between collegues and I...
 
Well,
If uptime is a huge concern, then yeah, they are a good thing.

From my personal opinion, if it's a high quality server from the start, the chance of PSU failure is a pretty low thing.

If you are going for absolute uptime, just make sure that everything else in the power system is redundant as well, separate UPS's, separate power circuits, etc.
 
When I buy servers with redundant power supplies I look at it less as a way to cover a PSU failure and more of a way to have more than one source of power to the box.

In these cases I'll have each PSU connected to a different UPS.
 
If uptime is very important, then yes. However, if uptime isn't critical, and you have a person on hand to replace it in short order, then no.
 
Thanks for the advice/suggestions.

We right now run a pretty mixed environment in terms of what kind of servers we have, and specs.

Our 'main' servers, DC, SDC (and AV), exchange, and file server are all on redundant PSU. For other applications we have been getting cheper 1U boxes (HP and IBM mostly) that do not have RPSU. I personally am of the school of thought that 500 extra dollars now, for a reundant PSU is worth the headache/hassle of having a production server go down. Though these new appliances are not mission critical and can be down for a day or two without MAJOR headache, it would be hassle none the less. My boss is of a different school of thought, so we just wanted to get some opinions...

We have large Symmetra APCs which give our server room about 20 minutes of battery backup, and at first sign of power failure, we have a gas powered generator...so power wise, we are fine...

Thanks again.
 
Any single point of failure that can be easily eliminated should be. Lose power to one power supply, server crash, database and OS boot files corrupt, spend all day recovering that one server when you should have been doing something else.... It's even more frustrating when you have to waste your time on one of those "unimportant" servers that wasn't worth a redundant power supply. How much more is your time worth than that unimportant server now?

We don't buy servers without redundant power. We also ensure that the redundant power supplies are connected to different distribution sources within the data center. Not buyind redundant power supplies for servers is the ultimate in penny-wise and pound-foolish.
 
rcolbert said:
Any single point of failure that can be easily eliminated should be. Lose power to one power supply, server crash, database and OS boot files corrupt, spend all day recovering that one server when you should have been doing something else.... It's even more frustrating when you have to waste your time on one of those "unimportant" servers that wasn't worth a redundant power supply. How much more is your time worth than that unimportant server now?

We don't buy servers without redundant power. We also ensure that the redundant power supplies are connected to different distribution sources within the data center. Not buyind redundant power supplies for servers is the ultimate in penny-wise and pound-foolish.
Click to expand...

Personally how I view it...with a difference literally being about 500 bucks.
 
I think redundant power supplies are well worth the extra money. When you are looking at servers that cost a few thousand dollars or more an extra $500 is really not that big of deal. Even if you can go a day or so without these servers how much employee time would be wasted waiting for them to get back up? Even if one or two people are all that use the application I'm sure their lost productivity would make up for $500 pretty quick.
 
aug1516 said:
I think redundant power supplies are well worth the extra money. When you are looking at servers that cost a few thousand dollars or more an extra $500 is really not that big of deal. Even if you can go a day or so without these servers how much employee time would be wasted waiting for them to get back up? Even if one or two people are all that use the application I'm sure their lost productivity would make up for $500 pretty quick.
Click to expand...
Too quickly, as some managers might say.

But like others said, redundancy is a key, and all to different battery backups.
 
feigned said:
Too quickly, as some managers might say.

But like others said, redundancy is a key, and all to different battery backups.
Click to expand...

We don't go to different battery backups unfortunately, just 1 Symmetra Power Array, but we have a backup generator that kicks on as well...
 
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