Most companies are experiencing an exponential increase of the number of servers they use. Power upgrades, availability and redundancy, all these factors lead to the use of multiple servers. For easier management and tighter security, all these servers tend to be gathered in the same technical room.

Power protection of multi-server sites must take into account 2 different implementation strategies:
Distributed or centralized power protection
Unattended shutdown of multiple servers

Distributed UPSs are NOT the Best Solution for Multi-Server Sites

The most obvious choice when it comes to protect several servers is to consider the use of multiple UPSs with a simple One-For-One formula. This is the typical configuration most companies will have when they have added new servers over time, each of them being attached to their original UPS (typically a 1 KVA UPS).
But the pitfalls are numerous: Consider a room with 25 servers, each of them with one attached UPS.

Waste of space	Should these systems be floor standing, this configuration doubles the necessary floor space. Should they be rack-mounted, this is a typical 4 U in height lost per UPS, or the equivalent of 2 full size (44U) rack enclosures for power protection only!
Increased cost of ownership	After a couple of years, battery replacement may become a big issue if operating conditions are not optimal: a service call every other week to change the batteries or one of the UPS itself is very likely.
Increased network traffic	If each UPS is remotely managed, the number of trap for system status will double, which can lead in a 20% reduction in network available bandwidth.

For all these reasons, considering central protection for multi-server sites is crucial.

MGE can provide central power protection solutions whatever the number of servers:

U.S. UPS Chart

International UPS Chart

All these products include fault-tolerant features for maximum availability. Redundancy and parallel operation are possible also.

Multi-Server Shutdown and Monitoring

One of the most common objections to central protection of multi-server sites is the complexity of signaling power events from one UPS to multiple systems. The reason behind this comment is the unavailability of network-based power management software from traditional UPS vendors. To overcome this perceived drawback, MGE UPS SYSTEMS introduced Solution-Pac for WANs, a TCP-IP based, distributed architecture to monitor, control and shutdown up to 256 servers protected by one single UPS. This unique solution addresses all the needs of multi-server configurations: