Per
dmd Liebert, a division of Emerson Electric, also makes small to large
UPS equipment. They also make a
neat product called the Glass House, which integrates an
air conditioner into a standard 19 inch machine rack. Useful when it's
convenient to cool the
machines but not the whole room.
My
boss at my last job worked for Emerson, so he had always pushed Liebert and
belittled my faith in
APC. This came up when I proposed a five
server project that was powered by two APC UPS's. He'd always email me articles from the Liebert site that stated how APC
sucked, and were
second rate.
I don't know much about Liebert, but I know what I've seen. At the time I had several years of computing/
network experience, and had worked with hundreds of APC's. Of all those I recall seeing a total of 5
died or otherwise
malfunctioned.
In the same several years, I saw a whole two Liebert UPS's. They were both
broken.
Analytical commentary aside, simple math states that per my experience a 5%
failure rate for APC's and a 100% failure rate for Lieberts should be expected.
I almost presented this to my boss, but
wussed out and instead noted that replacing the APC's with a Liebert
equivelent would raise the cost of the project by a third. At that he said "let's go with the
cost-efficient APC!".
We also had a problem with heat in the machine room. It typically ran about ninety degrees F back there. My health aside, all the little
LCD's on my
Hewlett Packards were complaining of
temperature problems. I proposed an
air conditioner, and my boss brought me up to speed on the aforementioned Glass House concept.
I nearly told him to
go to hell, as his idea would cool down the machines, but probably RAISE the high temp of my workplace. This wasn't an
option, it was an
insult. But I calmly pointed out that the price of one Glass House was three times that of the air conditioner I proposed. And it would require four GH's to enclose all
production machines.
I got my air conditioner. And I learned that
stock ownership leads to funny
management decisions.