In August of 2003 a massive power blackout hit Canada and the US, plunging 50 million people into darkness for nearly two days. During the first few seconds of that blackout, countless computers went silent, causing untold data loss. For most people, the power failure simply resulted in a 'data integrity check' by the operating system the next time their PC booted up. For others, the blackout may have caused the loss of an unsaved document, or in the worst case, total file corruption.

While an Uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS) is an often overlooked computer accessory, having one at that moment would have protected a PC from loss of power, and potentially given a user 20-40 minutes to save their work and shut down the programs and desktop computer safely.

While power failures are a rare occurrence in the city, it is not the only thing that can go wrong with the electricity supply from the utility. Utility power travels great distances and goes through many transformers before finally arriving at the socket in your wall; solar flares, sun spots, fallen trees, lightening and equipment failures can all contribute in one way or another to every thing from brownouts, spikes in voltage, unstable frequencies and just generally 'bad' power quality.

In the PCstats labs we tend to see the utility power fluctuate during the course of the working day, from 120V through to 127V at the end of the day. In the past we've even experienced the building's transformer blow up... Suffice to say, there was plenty of acrid black smoke after the lights went out that time.

Now I'm sure you can imagine that after a power failure thoughts instantly turn to the topic of UPS backups for more than just key systems. While this used to be an expensive proposition, UPS' have dropped down in price, and are now very affordable.

The Powerware 5125 is a Line-Interactive 1000VA UPS, and with additional Electronic Battery Modules (EBMs) can increase its overall power capacity to 2200VA or thereabouts should your future requirements increase. The UPS features Powerware's own advanced battery management console, "buck and double boost" regulation to deliver constant voltage, hot swapable batteries, the ability to power up the UPS without utility power, sequential shut down and load management, network transient protector (surge protection), and the very handy X-slot communications port.

The X-slot is essentially a communications bay that comes standard with a serial cable port to allow you to manage the UPS. That serial cable port can be swapped out for a variety of other devices, including an SNMP/WEB adaptor which we'll get to momentarily.