On a related topic, I have often been interested in investigating the
possibility of using some hack to switch my servers over to DC power
with DC UPSes. I don't even know what hardware is out there for this,
but since this related topic came up, I thought I'd see if anyone else
has looked into it.
To illustrate the ridiculous waste most setups produce on typical
UPS configurations, we have:
|
| AC
|
V
-------------------------- DC (12V?) -----------
| UPS |<-------------->| Battery |
| (rectifier & inverter) | | |
-------------------------- -----------
|
| AC (imperfect, non-sinusoidal, etc)
|
V
----------------------------
| Computer PSU |
| (rectifier & converter?) |
----------------------------
| |
| DC 5V | DC 12V
V V
---------------------
| Mobo & Drives, etc|
---------------------
It sure seems like converting from AC to DC just once, before we even
get to the battery and computer, would be a good idea:
|
| AC
|
V
--------------- DC (12V?) -----------
| UPS |<-------------->| Battery |
| (rectifier) | | |
--------------- -----------
|
| DC (12V?)
|
V
---------------------------
| Computer PSU |
| (regulator & converter) |
---------------------------
| |
| DC 5V | DC 12V
V V
---------------------
| Mobo & Drives, etc|
---------------------
Google and others are achieving power savings in server environments
by eliminating excessive AC/DC conversions:
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/11/27/facebook-follows-google-to-data-center-savings/
But I'm not sure what hardware is out there for the Average Joe. I
have run across one or two power supplies with built-in batteries in
the past, but I would wonder if that's the best way to go... might be
harder to replace those batteries without replacing the whole PSU and
there might be some nice gains in moving some of the heat source
(AC/DC conversion, battery charging) outside of your server cases.
In any case, has anyone researched this more than I have?
tim
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