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NOTE: This article is an archived copy for portfolio purposes only, and may refer to obsolete products or technologies. Old articles are not maintained for continued relevance and accuracy.
May 12, 1997

Deltec PowerRite Pro II

Deltec's PowerRite Pro II family of uninterruptible power supplies (UPSes) helps alleviate the problem of lost power to your network by using a single UPS among multiple devices. The product also makes other network devices aware of the current power situation through distributed power-monitoring software.

Figure 1
Figure 1

The key feature of this UPS is the use of multiple loads, which are simply multiple sets of individually controlled AC receptacles on the UPS. You can configure each load for separate shutdown and startup delay timers using the LAN Safe III management software. Similarly, you can configure the PowerRite Pro II so that communications equipment such as routers stay online as long as possible. The PowerRite Pro II allows for staged charging of the batteries, eliminating the trickle-charge that most other UPSes rely on. Staging also allows the UPS to notify you of impending battery failure.

The LAN Safe III software provides network-wide control over all the PowerRite Pro II UPSes and computers on the LAN. LAN Safe III also uses IPX and TCP/IP to communicate between the various network devices.

When the power state changes, the group controller sends alerts to each system running the monitoring software and will even initiate system shutdowns on those remote systems if needed.I did encounter a few minor problems with the product. None of the implementations I tested supported TCP/IP, instead relying on IPX. Deltec plans to fix them for the next release of the product, which is due later this year.

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Copyright © 2010-2017 Eric A. Hall.
Portions copyright © 1997 InfoWorld Media Group, Inc. Used with permission.
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