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I came into work this morning to find out that one of our CISCO 2960s had died during the night, I haven't had a chance to figure out why, but I'm guessing a power spike killed it, and the surge protector it was using is useless. That said I've been thinking for a while about getting some small UPS units to power my remote switches. What would you use to power 1-2 Cisco 2960s for around an hour? Rack mountable is preferred.

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Pick your favorite UPS brand. Lookup the wattage one of those switches pulls down, multiple by 2 for the 2 units, add a safety factor (usually 25-50%) and get a UPS in that many VA. Also, surge protectors have a limit to how much they protect against, rated in Joules. Cheap ones have very low ratings, so a near-by lightening strike will go right through them. Expensive ones have very high ratings and will stop darn near anything. Be sure to check the Joules rating though. – Chris S♦ Mar 11 '11 at 18:26
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The two Cisco 2960's (assuming non-POE with 48 ports) will pull 270 watts peak. At the minimum, you will need about 450-500VA in order to support that. However, with network closets, I always target a longer runtime since they may be connecting devices that still have input power.

With that in mind, if we target roughly 30 minutes of uptime you would be looking at 1000VA or so (it really depends on the battery size though).

Some examples from APC would be:
APC Smart-UPS 1000VA LCD RM 2U 120V
APC Smart-UPS SC 1500VA 120V - 2U Rackmount/Tower

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I would also recommend getting one that has an environmental card in it. That way you can be notified of power problems and temperature problems. Yes, they do cost more. But are usually cheap compared to lost productivity. – Justin Mar 11 '11 at 19:16
Thanks for the input – Peter Mar 11 '11 at 19:55
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I would recommend a double-conversion on-line UPS. This will clean up the power a lot more than a line-interactive UPS. I would advise toward APC's Smart-UPS® On-Line series of products.

APC Smart-UPS® On-Line

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