What exactly is UPS? ( Part 1)

Have you restarted your router?

A 30-second power outage and no internet might cause a moment of frustration, but you’ll eventually recover on its own. However, if the power outage affects a data center building—manufacturing bank transactions, your phone’s chat history, and your recently placed orders—30 seconds is no longer just a matter of “frustration.” According to Uptime Institute ‘s industry research, most operators’ recent major outage losses exceeded $100,000.

What makes the server room withstand the “moment of a power outage”?

The answer isn’t a diesel generator , but today’s main focus: a UPS .

1. UPS = A “power bank” for the building.

UPS, or uninterruptible power supply in Chinese , literally means “power supply that is switched on the moment the mains power fails, so that the machines cannot detect it.”

The closest analogy is a power bank.

Connect a large power bank to your desktop computer: When the mains power is normal, the power bank powers the computer while charging itself; if there is a power outage, the power bank seamlessly takes over—the computer screen won’t even flicker, and you can calmly save your files, shut down the computer, or wait for the power to be restored.

The UPS in a data center works on the same logic, except that its “computer” is tens of thousands of servers, and its “power bank” is a wall of battery packs.

Second, 90% of the time, it’s doing something else.

Most people think that UPS is a backup device that only comes into play during power outages. This is a common misconception.

Mains electricity isn’t as clean as you might think.

Voltage fluctuations occur, thunderstorms bring surges, the start-up and shutdown of large equipment causes surges, and frequency converters “spit” harmonics into the power grid. People can’t feel these things—the lights in the house stay on as usual—but for delicate devices like servers, prolonged exposure to unclean electricity can lead to data errors at best, and hardware damage at worst.

an online UPS is to “wash” the mains power before feeding it to the equipment: if the voltage is unstable, I will stabilize it; if the power is not clean, I will filter it out.

So to be precise: a UPS normally functions as an electrical purifier, and only becomes a power bank during a power outage. Power outage rescue is only 10% of its role.