UPS

How it works

• Sits between the wall and the equipment.
• Covers short outages and smooths out surges.
• Batteries wear out in a few years, so check the health.
• Size it to the load: the firewall, switch and server go first.

What can go wrong (example scenario)

A four-person accounting firm's server lost power mid-write during a summer storm. The database for their practice software was corrupted. The restore from the previous night cost a day of re-entry during tax season.

How WILDCARD handles it

Network covers the firewall and switch, which are the first things to put on a UPS. Recommending the right size and watching battery health is the kind of work that card looks after.

• A dental office keeps the server and x-ray PC up through a brief outage and shuts them down cleanly if it lasts.
• A law firm's firewall and switch stay on so the phones keep working during a flicker.
• A retailer's point-of-sale and card terminal survive an outage long enough to finish the sale in front of them.

Example scenario: A small clinic in an older building had power drops nearly every week. Their server rebooted each time and the practice software needed repair twice. A modest UPS with a shutdown cable ended the reboots. The battery alert four years later was the only time anyone thought about it again.

A question owners ask

How big a UPS do I need?

Add up the watts of what you want protected and aim for ten minutes of runtime. For most small offices that is a unit the size of a shoebox for the network gear and a larger one for a server.