My Dell 1920R UPS popped; potential replacements are Dell 2700R or APC SMX3000RMHV2U

BlizzardX · 1 Mar 2021 at 21:47

Hi

My current Dell 1920R ups popped and had a lovely smell indicating the power board has a blown something somewhere. I have the opportunity to get a replacement 2700R for $600NZD including new batteries or an APC SMX3000RMHV2U without batteries and purchase replacements at ~$550NZD; so $600 for the 2700R or ~$800NZD for the APC SMX3000RMHV2U.

The question is, is it worth paying the extra for the APC with new batteries or is the Dell 2700R sufficient given it has new batteries too and I already have rails to support it. The UPS supports my homelab of vSAN enabled VMware hosts, synology NAS, Unifi swithes and router, and the fibre internet ONT.

I have historically used the NAS with a hosted VM to control the Dell UPS so that it can run scripts to shutdown the vSAN safely but don't know how the APC can work with vmware... does its webgui have automatic control or does it still need seperate software to control hosts/vms?

These are used products so I don't have high expectations around the quality or warrenty but I am more interested in the whether the cost diferences are worth it.

Thanks,

Chris

BlizzardX · 2 Mar 2021 at 22:23

So interestingly the Dell has a higher capacity giving an extra 30 minutes runtime at my expected load, where as the APC has the same run time as my now dead 1920R but both are rated at the same output VA. I'm interested in the APC management card integration with VMWAre and how that works, anyone got any experience?

neil_g · 3 Mar 2021 at 20:26

I've never had any bother with APC. They have a virtual appliance for VMware and power control etc.

Refurb APC are particularly good value.

BlizzardX · 3 Mar 2021 at 21:02

Yeah its the virtual appliance and potentially more modern web interface that appeals. Found out I can purchase replacement cells for ~400 so that brings the cost difference to $50 in favour of hte Dell but the APC doesn't have rails so thats may be an additinoal $150NZD so still the same... Does anybody know when this APC was released to market?

BlizzardX · 5 Mar 2021 at 09:41

So went for the Dell 2700R. Older, but I've got the management card and rails already along with my Rpi setup to manage the vsan cluster. The APC looked good on paper but there was something fishy considering how much the units cost in NZ and it looked in a pretty bad state... The Dell on the other hand still had the plastic sticky cover protecting the LCD display!