[Nut-upsuser] choosing a UPS (in the United States)

[Eric S. Johansson]

I do a bunch of "kindness of strangers" hosting in my basement and my 
three kVA apc unit died recently.  In looking around, it looked like 
Belkin was a reasonable low-end replacement for a few machines.  Then I 
read this mailing list after I purchased one and was gifted another.  It 
looks like people don't like Belkin.  ;-)

So the question is what's a good UPS for running for five machines, 12 
disk drives, and seven CPUs (one being a DEC Alpha)?  No, I haven't 
figured out the power budget.  When I take things down this weekend, I 
will be measuring the power consumption of all the devices.

Power outages around here tend to be fairly frequent but short-lived 
(i.e. under five minutes) as the trees brush across power lines and then 
the circus reset.

Given this kind of power fluctuation, I think I am happy with roughly a 
five or 10 minute runtime with fairly quick shutdown triggers.

assuming that the Belkin units are uncontrollable because the firmware 
and hardware implementation is just awful, what is recommended and 
available here in the states?

thanks for sharing your wisdom.

---eric