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Office and IT server room power needs

Hey all, I just joined a firm and wanted to find out the power/electrical usage of our office (fairly small) and server room.


I don't fully understand amps and circuits and things of that nature, but want to find out what power/electrical capacity we have and how to go about finding it


Any information would be helpful, links to such information for IT server rooms would be helpful as well


Thanks
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pjam
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We probably need more info, but a couple of points to start:
If you plan on a large UPS for your servers it may require 220volt special plug.
All servers\UPS should be on dedicated circuits.
Nice if computers are also, but usually not possible.
All computers/servers should be on a UPS though.
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Firstly you would need to make an assesemt of what exactly equipment would need have a secondary power backup. Firstly you would need a UPS of some sorts to keep your servers running long enough for either the power to come back on, or to be able to shut them down correctly. You could also have an accompanying generator, depending of course how critical you think it is to keep the systems running. Take look at the link below and that will allow you to guage roughly what kind of UPS is required

http://www.apc.com/tools/ups_selector/
To discover what you have, you can do a couple of things.  You can go to each device and look at the power label that every device should have and see what the Amps are. The number you come up with will probably be a little high since most things don't draw that kind of amperage all the time. Still it gives you a good ballpark.  The other thing you can do, which I would recommend anyway, is to hire an electrical vendor, preferably one with business experience to come in and do a survey for you, letting you know what you have and what's being used and then helping you to plan out future expansion.
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ASKER

Thanks, I am basically lookign for electricity 101 when it comes to APCs, circuit panels, power, etc... (amps, volts, etc)
I can't speak for everyone here, but, although we can give you advice based on our experiences, ultimately, to do it right, you will need to services of an electrical contractor.
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Ess Kay
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