So I ordered an APC Smart-UPS C1000

[coxhaus]

I just bought an APC Smart-UPS C1000. Amazon has them for $406 with free shipping. I need to power back up my Cisco L3 switch with 3 Cisco wireless POE+ APs as well as my router and modem. I plan to add another AP to my wife's sewing room. I have an older smaller APC which is running out of power. I bought it originally to keep my modem and router hot. The replacement battery for the C1000 is only $139 every 4 years or so not bad. I could probably also add my small Synology NAS. The NAS does not matter to me much as it spends most of its time off protecting my pictures.

I still have 3 old APCs. I have an APC 1500 rack mount, a SMART-UPS 700, a SMART-UPS1500. The problem is they are at least 15 years old and need to be refurbished. The batteries for the big ones are expensive to replace.
I was thinking the newer technology would be better. Newer ones still seem to use lead acid batteries. The C1000 that I ordered has pure sign wave with over and under voltage correction.

 

[drinkingbird]

I just bought an APC Smart-UPS C1000. Amazon has them for $406 with free shipping. I need to power back up my Cisco L3 switch with 3 Cisco wireless POE+ APs as well as my router and modem. I plan to add another AP to my wife's sewing room. I have an older smaller APC which is running out of power. I bought it originally to keep my modem and router hot. The replacement battery for the C1000 is only $139 every 4 years or so not bad. I could probably also add my small Synology NAS. The NAS does not matter to me much as it spends most of its time off protecting my pictures.

I still have 3 old APCs. I have an APC 1500 rack mount, a SMART-UPS 700, a SMART-UPS1500. The problem is they are at least 15 years old and need to be refurbished. The batteries for the big ones are expensive to replace.
I was thinking the newer technology would be better. Newer ones still seem to use lead acid batteries. The C1000 that I ordered has pure sign wave with over and under voltage correction.

Yeah unfortunately Lithium Ion based UPS are still very expensive.

I still run a 20 year old Smart UPS 1400 and replace the batteries every 6-8 years with good CSB ones. Unit still works fine, I did modify it to allow me to adjust the float voltage for the batteries though, makes them last longer.

 

[coxhaus]

We had a bad thunderstorm last Thursday with a power outage. All my network stayed up including my Cisco wireless APs. So, I call it a success.

 

[ddaenen1]

I still have 3 old APCs. I have an APC 1500 rack mount, a SMART-UPS 700, a SMART-UPS1500. The problem is they are at least 15 years old and need to be refurbished. The batteries for the big ones are expensive to replace.
I was thinking the newer technology would be better. Newer ones still seem to use lead acid batteries. The C1000 that I ordered has pure sign wave with over and under voltage correction.

I have an APC Smart-UPS SMX750i. I bought it cheap about 4 years ago. I think about 90 USD. Batteries were toast. Rather then buying a very expensive APC replacement pack, i opened up the battery housing, removed the batteries and bought 4 new single cells. They are indeed lead/zinc and the identical ones were about 80 USD for all 4. I initially connected the UPS with my Synology via USB but afterwards bought an AP9631 network card so i could manage it through the LAN which works great and i also deployed the monitoring package in pfSense. I got my router, switch, Synology and TrueNAS server all hooked up to it. The setup works perfectly fine and after more than 3 years, battery health is still fine.

 

[coxhaus]

My new Smart APC came with web software that assume runs in APC's cloud somewhere offsite tracking all ups and downs and remaining time. I have a little over 2 hours for my router, modem, and Cisco POE+ switch with multiple wireless APs.

Back when I ran pfsense years ago I fed ntp time to my Cisco devices from pfsense and blocked it outbound for devices. It worked well. There was a big hack with time back then. You might want to take a look at it.
I used a rack mount APC 1500 back then and my main Windows server controlled shutdown running APC's windows software.

I have used both APC batteries' and non-brand and they worked fine. Eventually the APC units need service and have to be sent in. They put APC batteries in when they are repaired and brought back to spec.

 

[drinkingbird]

My new Smart APC came with web software that assume runs in APC's cloud somewhere offsite tracking all ups and downs and remaining time. I have a little over 2 hours for my router, modem, and Cisco POE+ switch with multiple wireless APs.

Back when I ran pfsense years ago I fed ntp time to my Cisco devices from pfsense and blocked it outbound for devices. It worked well. There was a big hack with time back then. You might want to take a look at it.
I used a rack mount APC 1500 back then and my main Windows server controlled shutdown running APC's windows software.

I have used both APC batteries' and non-brand and they worked fine. Eventually the APC units need service and have to be sent in. They put APC batteries in when they are repaired and brought back to spec.

I only ever use CSB batteries. Learned the hard way, they are cheaper in the long run, they last longer. A few years ago they released a "long life" version of some of the more common ones, too soon to tell but I started using those as they were only a few dollars more, will see how they fare.

Luckily power is pretty reliable where I am, rarely goes out and if it does, it isn't a really long outage, but if it is and I don't need internet, I just shut it all down so the batteries don't get fully drained which cuts a lot of lifespan off. Along with a mod I did to allow me to adjust the float voltage of the batteries, my last set of CSB (non long life) lasted around 6 or 7 years before the runtime started dropping off and they were under 50%.

My Smart UPS is over 20 years old at this point, I'm sure newer ones have better charging circuits in them and could probably get even more life span out of the batteries, but given the cost of a new equivalent one (and the fact that they don't seem as reliable) I'm sticking with this one til it craps out.

 

[coxhaus]

Usually by the 3rd set of batteries the APC units need to be serviced from what I have seen over the past 20 years. I don't work on them so I send them in. The smallest APC I have used is a Smart UPS 750. I have a 750, a 1500 rack and a 1400. The 750 and 1400 is white or light my rack mount is black. Both the 750 and the 1400 have been serviced. The 1500 rack was my newest one. It may still work I just don't use my rack any more as my granddaughter took over my server room. And I just decided to buy a new one and not deal with it. The new little ones are not that expensive.
The batteries for the big ones are too expensive for a small job. I have never gotten 7 years out of 1 set of batteries on any of my APC units.

I had a dedicated 20-amp circuit run for my server rack. I use it for my APC units. Not having that can wear out your batteries faster if you run short of power on a shared circuit.

 

[ddaenen1]

Back when I ran pfsense years ago I fed ntp time to my Cisco devices from pfsense and blocked it outbound for devices. It worked well. There was a big hack with time back then. You might want to take a look at it.
I used a rack mount APC 1500 back then and my main Windows server controlled shutdown running APC's windows software.

Thanks for the tip. I really like that idea. Less connections to the outside is always better.

 

[ddaenen1]

i looked into the NTP thing and got it figured out. Got the NTP server set up, added to the DHCP servers and configured on all major devices like my switch, AP's and even my Airbook and they all seem to be digesting it well. Somehow, i have the feeling i am missing something since i want to make sure devices cannot go directly outside to connect to an NTP server either.

 

[coxhaus]

Once you change your devices to point at pfsense they are not going to be looking outside. Don't leave any outside ntp server definitions in your clients. They will not talk outside. You should be able to watch with SNORT.

I think but it has been many years since I did this but deny udp any any eq ntp. You may need to research it.

PS
I just did a google and port 123 is server and 1023 is client.

 

[ddaenen1]

Yup, i figured it out. All devices play along well except for the WAP571. Even if i change the NTP servers, they still keep resolving the previous NTP hosts. A reboot seems to fix it but i could only do one so far considering it is Sunday and everyone is online. I will reset them during the day tomorrow and see if that fixes it for the 3 remaining.

 

[drinkingbird]

Usually by the 3rd set of batteries the APC units need to be serviced from what I have seen over the past 20 years. I don't work on them so I send them in. The smallest APC I have used is a Smart UPS 750. I have a 750, a 1500 rack and a 1400. The 750 and 1400 is white or light my rack mount is black. Both the 750 and the 1400 have been serviced. The 1500 rack was my newest one. It may still work I just don't use my rack any more as my granddaughter took over my server room. And I just decided to buy a new one and not deal with it. The new little ones are not that expensive.
The batteries for the big ones are too expensive for a small job. I have never gotten 7 years out of 1 set of batteries on any of my APC units.

I had a dedicated 20-amp circuit run for my server rack. I use it for my APC units. Not having that can wear out your batteries faster if you run short of power on a shared circuit.

Service is typically just adjusting the float voltage to account for components changing over time. (assuming other components haven't failed), I put in a potentiometer to allow me to do that myself. Smart UPS 1400 going strong after 20 years and a few battery changes still.

 

[coxhaus]

Service is typically just adjusting the float voltage to account for components changing over time. (assuming other components haven't failed), I put in a potentiometer to allow me to do that myself. Smart UPS 1400 going strong after 20 years and a few battery changes still.

Seems like they changed a capacitor in one of my older units. I got about 10 years out of it which is 3 sets of batteries.
You will know as the lights will not work correctly or it will make noise when charging.

I don't have my paperwork anymore as my file cabinet also went away when my granddaughter took over my server room.

 

[coxhaus]

On blocking ntp now that I have slept on it, I think I may have blocked outbound in my L3 switch rather than pfsense. Either would work and there are always multiple ways to setup the ACLs.

I did not add ntp to DHCP. I was running a Windows domain part of the time so I would not want to change ntp on Windows clients. Towards the end when I was winding down, I ran Windows Home server which might have worked. If it was me, I would point pfsense ntp at the Windows domain controller and let it handle the Windows clients. I would always use Microsoft DHCP for any Windows domain.

I use DHCP on my L3 switch, I prefer it to using pfsense, less load on pfsense. It is much easier to change routers having DHCP on the L3 switch. I have no Windows domains now. I am trying to retire.

 

[ddaenen1]

On blocking ntp now that I have slept on it, I think I may have blocked outbound in my L3 switch rather than pfsense. Either would work and there are always multiple ways to setup the ACLs.

I did not add ntp to DHCP. I was running a Windows domain part of the time so I would not want to change ntp on Windows clients. Towards the end when I was winding down, I ran Windows Home server which might have worked. If it was me, I would point pfsense ntp at the Windows domain controller and let it handle the Windows clients. I would always use Microsoft DHCP for any Windows domain.

I use DHCP on my L3 switch, I prefer it to using pfsense, less load on pfsense. It is much easier to change routers having DHCP on the L3 switch. I have no Windows domains now. I am trying to retire.

What i did is forward any LAN traffic on UDP 123 (NTP) to the pfSense NTP server. Seems to work well.

 

[coxhaus]

What i did is forward any LAN traffic on UDP 123 (NTP) to the pfSense NTP server. Seems to work well.

My guess is pfsense allows outbound so you might want to play around with blocking 1023 out bound on the WAN. You need to tailor it to your network. Maybe what you have is good enough. Just things to play with.

I have pfsense working using 2.6. I have not figured out going to plus. I tried adding $0 to the cart and checking out but I must have done something wrong. I am running asymmetrical routing with my L3 switch right now that I need to fix but I want to upgrade to the latest first.

It seems I don't have a Negate account. Yea I figured it out.
I may need to wait as I just installed it an hour ago. It is telling me "unable to check for updates"

 

[coxhaus]

Still waiting as it has been up for a couple of hours. The dashboard says 23.01 is available but update indicates updates are not available.
My old Dell i3 3.4 with 2 real cores is running at 0% at 27.9 C. It is hardly working. My L3 switch does all the local routing and DHCP so pfsense is loafing now. Probably not using much power which I need to check after I build a special extension cord for my Fluke meter. As I work my into SNORT later on this should handle it. I guess this is going to be the closest to Cisco I am going to get right now as Cisco owns SNORT.

I want to try my 10 gig card but I need the pfsense drivers in the update.

 

[coxhaus]

I must have a bad cable. I just ran a speed test. I had to use longer ones to setup the Dell on the desk.

 

[coxhaus]

I fixed it.

 

[coxhaus]

Finally, my pfsense upgraded to 23.01. I am going to let it run for a while and settle in.

First impression is it seems snapper.