Re: Power supply efficiency on older model Sun equipment

This got me thinking about my setup that runs 24/7 which is a Sunfire 
V100 along with a Cisco 2950 10/100 switch as shown here: 
http://costello.mine.nu/private/mysun.html  . The V100's uptime is 540 
days (today) so reliability is clearly not an issue.

The second V100 is a cold spare and the SS20 and external SCSI drive are 
now decommissioned. I also have an APC Smart UPS 2200 that protects both 
of these and my DSL modem from power outages. I un-plugged the UPS and 
reconnected it with a short extension cable in which I can access the 
individual wires. I used a clamp meter to see how much current it was 
pulling. With everything running it was consuming 2.15A @120V or 258W. I 
figured that the Cisco 2950 was probably pulling a fair share so I 
pulled the plug on it. The reading only went down to 1.95A so the Cisco 
2950 is consuming about 24W. The V100 only has an 80W power supply and 
based on the system handbook it should only be pulling about 60W based 
on what is in it. Therefore the UPS and DSL modem are pulling about 170W 
which seems hard to believe.

Does anyone have any experience on the power consumption/efficiency of 
UPS's? You could consider me fairly UPS crazy here with 2 PC with their 
own. One on my wireless phone system base station, one on my Wireless 
router & Vonage box, and one on each of my 2 replay TV units. Needless 
to say, power outages are only a problem if they are longer than an hour 
or so.

Brian P. Costello               [email protected]
San Francisco Bay Area