Founded in 1981, American Power Conversion* (APC*) is the market leader in the power protection industry. From its headquarters in Rhode Island, APC designs, develops, and distributes surge suppressors, power conditioning equipment, network management software, and Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPSs), which collectively have received more than 100 awards worldwide for their reliability and performance. APC's Smart-UPS protects network servers and other network equipment from power events, such as surges, sags, brownouts, and blackouts. Smart-UPS filters incoming power and then drops or raises the power signal to attached equipment to ensure that output remains at 120 volts. As a line-interactive UPS, Smart-UPS runs attached equipment from its own battery only when configured to do so or during power outages.

Network supervisors manage Smart-UPS with the PowerChute* plus software that comes with it. PowerChute plus records all power events that Smart-UPS experiences and graphically displays the device's input power and power load, enabling supervisors to identify and resolve power problems before those problems result in damage to valuable network hardware. With PowerChute plus, network supervisors can specify the types of power events Smart-UPS responds to, how it responds to those events, whom PowerChute plus notifies of impending power disasters, and by what method (E-mail or pager).

PowerChute plus supports a number of network operating systems (NOSs), including Novell's NetWare. By developing PowerChute plus for NetWare, APC tapped an established market: There are more than four million NetWare servers currently in operation, and those servers need power protection. Not surprisingly, nearly 45% of APC's customers use its products to protect NetWare networks.

Like most companies, Provident Bank (Provident) in Cincinnati, Ohio, cannot afford the time and money it loses when its local area network (LAN) goes down. While all of the servers on Provident's LAN are important, the bank particularly depends on its six NetWare 4.1 servers, which store all of the applications that 2,500 NetWare clients use--including mission-critical applications. If those servers go down, Provident's employees are unable to conduct business. Thus, says research and development engineer Mark Klein, it is "absolutely essential that our NetWare servers stay on line all of the time."

Although Provident's NetWare 4.1 servers are exceptionally reliable, the bank needed better protection against harmful power surges and losses. As Klein points out, "when the power goes, a fault-tolerant system alone is no good." And losing power is an imminent reality: Computers are subjected monthly to more than 100 power problems, which can damage or destroy data and hardware. Recognizing the inevitability and frequency of power events, Klein began searching for a UPS device that would match the reliability and performance he had come to expect from the bank's NetWare network.

Klein found the reliability and performance he needed in APC Smart-UPS devices, which now protect Provident Bank's NetWare servers (and many of the NetWare client workstations). Klein considered other UPS vendors, but found that the management and diagnostic software included with APC's competitors' devices just "didn't have the functionality that PowerChute plus has."

With PowerChute plus, Klein configured the Smart-UPS devices to respond to a variety of power events and to perform a number of proactive tests, ensuring the bank's NetWare servers will always be available -- even when disruptive power events occur. For example, Klein configured the Smart-UPS devices to periodically use their own batteries to run attached equipment. As the Smart-UPS devices use their batteries, they calculate (and PowerChute plus reports) how long the batteries run. This report tells Klein how long the Smart-UPS devices can keep the company's NetWare servers running without power (approximately seven hours) and consequently how much time he would have to restore power before the network went down.

This periodic battery calibration provides an additional benefit - by configuring the Smart-UPS devices to occasionally run attached equipment from their own batteries rather than using those batteries all the time or recharging them only periodically, Klein can significantly increase their life span. In fact, many of the company's Smart-UPS devices are still using their original battery packs, which are nearly five years old.

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