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Eaton PDUs vs Eaton UPS comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Eaton PDUs
Ranking in Data Center Power Solutions
11th
Average Rating
10.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Eaton UPS
Ranking in Data Center Power Solutions
1st
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Data Center Power Solutions category, the mindshare of Eaton PDUs is 0.9%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Eaton UPS is 37.4%, up from 36.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Center Power Solutions
 

Featured Reviews

GS
Power monitoring alerts us when there is a commercial power issue to help ensure we don't lose equipment
One of the best parts is the number of outlets on the PDU. It allows for excellent wire management so you don't have a spider web of power cords. I also really like the way they lock, so that somebody can't accidentally bump a power cord and it will come out. I, personally, was working on the back of a systems rack and it was a very tight space. As I was moving, my knee bumped across a power cord, not very hard at all, and it took down half of the rack. We were right in the middle of updating some OS files and we lost two servers completely that had to be completely rebuilt. Also, the solution's color chassis options are a benefit. One of our new standards is that we've gone red and yellow with all power cables and PDUs, for primary and redundant. It's very easy for a technician to see that he's not unplugging both the power supplies of one unit. When everything is black and you're trying to trace it, sometimes your finger accidentally comes off the cable and you get on the wrong one. Next thing you know, you've unplugged both power supplies of a system and you have a crash. I've never done that one, but I have seen it done several times. The red and yellow make it almost idiot proof. In addition, it allows you to configure as many outlets as you want, in a length that fits your specific rack size, so you don't have to have multiple PDUs.
RP
Company value is more than the product. It is their people Eaton's great product and people keep bringing me back
The biggest improvement I would like to see is the remote monitoring and management. All the interfaces should match. The unit touch screen, Web interface, and other remote options should provide the same information and it can never be enough! Presently the touch screens and web based interfaces look and function differently. I want to know what this unit is doing. I want to be able to track and trend the data. . The only other features I would like to see are technology improvements, which they're doing anyway. At what point do you go to transformerless? At what point do you have better caps? UPS operate in a simple matter. improvements in software, contactors, coupled with transformerless and Lithium-Ion are disruptive technologies. All the vendors are doing it and making it available. From an improvement perspective, they're on the right path. There isn't anything major that I can jump up and say, "I wish you would do this better." On the single-phase units, I'd like to see ESS and Lithium-Ion through the produce line down to the 50k units. These are coming!

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"What's most valuable about this is that Eaton built for us the exact model that I needed. We went through the customization options, everything from the cable length and electrical specifications to the color of the PDU. It showed different color PDUs to keep my company's data center that much more organized."
"The solution's color chassis options are a benefit. One of our new standards is that we've gone red and yellow with all power cables and PDUs, for primary and redundant. It's very easy for a technician to see that he's not unplugging both the power supplies of one unit. When everything is black and you're trying to trace it, sometimes your finger accidentally comes off the cable and you get on the wrong one. Next thing you know, you've unplugged both power supplies of a system and you have a crash... The red and yellow make it almost idiot proof."
"It's also very important that it's a rack-mountable, three-phase UPS. Some of the equipment we run requires a three-phase, such as HPE BladeSystems and some of the Cisco core devices."
"The most valuable feature is that they work. They've been really reliable for us. They come as advertised. There is also a nice network feature that allows us to monitor them."
"Their service and their relationship with their customers is their biggest value, absolutely, compared to the competitors that I've dealt with... the service organization of Eaton is one of their strongest points."
"VMMS is a good feature. There are multiple charging units inside each UPS. For example, on my 9395 I have three to four charging units and the unit will scale down. Let's say I've got a megawatt of power. If I'm only running 200 Kw I can drop the charging units down and rotate through the charging units to reduce energy. They do all that."
"The footprint is standard, the same thing as every other solution that we could have gotten. But the power density in relation to its footprint compares really well. I have an APC that has the same footprint that's 20kW less. The Eatons have the same footprint but more power."
"It's also very important that the solution is a three-phase UPS. Three-phase cuts down on power usage, which cuts down on our electrical bill, compared to a single-phase product."
"The most valuable feature is the control... we couldn't live life without [PredictPulse]. It does add a level of comfort knowing that PredictPulse is telling us about potential errors before they happen. My preference is to keep it in ESS mode. It saves me a good amount of money."
"The most valuable feature is that they don't go down. We haven't had any other UPSs in this location, but we've had Chloride UPSs at other places and they didn't do so well."
 

Cons

"My only complaint with it is that we use Panduit wire management and Eaton's PDUs will not lock into Panduit. There are two little knobs on the back where you can just slip it in and it'll lock right into the wire management, but it does not work on Panduit. It only works on their proprietary wire management. It needs to be able to integrate with other wire managers."
"The initial setup was slightly complicated due to the mounting incompatibility with the competitor's server cabinets, the one that I described to you earlier."
"Outside of a full-service contract, my only concern is technician availability for repairs. Where we don't have a full-service contract with them, which unfortunately is the larger portion of our equipment from them, we're just like anybody else, waiting for a slot for a technician to arrive."
"The industry is going to a smaller footprint, but that does come at a cost, specifically for battery reserve time, size and density of the system, and BTU generation. Those three areas contribute to the heat generation factor. I think that they've done a really good job. But, when you look across our infrastructure, it's the UPS system that takes up the most space of any of our products."
"The external monitoring solution could use further enhancements. I'm thinking of business continuity. If an internal legacy monitoring solution goes down, and it has no one to connect to the outside world, then it can't send out an alert. How are we going to be able to determine that there is a problem with that UPS if it loses network connectivity?"
"I want to monitor remotely and that is a complaint I have... The remote monitoring software they have does not provide the same information that the touch screen provides and neither provide me the same information that the field techs can draw out of the unit when they directly connect to them."
"We do not use Eaton's remote monitoring, we use StruxureWare. We do use all of Eaton's web interface cards and their SNMP polling, but it's actually going to a Schneider product. Eaton makes something similar, it just wasn't as intuitive."
"They could enhance their software, but overall, it's a good solution."
"When it comes to the power management software portion, that's the part that I haven't really seen or heard a lot about. The dashboards of the UPS's, or the management software, are one area that they could probably improve a little."
"One time, a feedback breaker in a system-bypass module, or something like that, was tripped. We brought them in to see what caused it. They figured it out and we haven't had an issue like that again, since."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is higher, but you're also buying from a company that's been around for decades. It has the staff to support you so that when you call at 2 o'clock in the morning, somebody is going to help you out. You're not going to have to wait until 8:00 AM the next day. It's more pricey, but I definitely think it's worth the money."
"The UPSs are saving us approximately $50,000 a year."
"I have a maintenance contract with Eaton, which has been very good. The notifications that we receive, we use email to my team, and they work well."
"We use their service plan, which includes parts so we don't do the maintenance on it ourselves. We have a service plan that we use, then they do all the maintenance and periodical maintenance (PM) work. If there are any hardware failures, then they also do the work. Therefore, it's a hardware/software support contract that includes labor."
"For our used case, 12kW is good. It has worked very well for us. They can be a lot bigger and they can be smaller, but the 12kW seems to be just about right for us. It has a good price point."
"When you bid them out, they're all within a single-digit percentage point of each other... The cost of Eaton's service is competitive because we bid it out. I bid the service for all my units on campus: APCs, Lieberts, Eatons, because we've got a big hodgepodge of everything. Eaton won on price."
"They are around $50,000 to $70,000 depending on the options and the modules that we get."
"I have mixed feelings about the pricing and licensing. I believe that when you sell a UPS, and considering the UPS is a lifeline to a lot of the major corporations, the monitoring solution should be part of the package automatically, out-the-door. If you have to raise that price on the UPS an extra $5,000, then do so at that moment. Don't have that as an extra offer after the UPS has been sold. I believe that all UPSs need to have high availability, all the latest software installed, and be ready to go out-the-door."
"It is an expensive technology. The maintenance is expensive. The batteries are expensive. Replacing those batteries is expensive as a capital cost. You have to plan for it every four to five years, but it's the cost of doing business. The cost of not having a good reliable system in place is even higher when you have catastrophic failures. I would recommend the product, but you do have to be prepared to spend some money, both on the product as well as all the environmental preparations for powering the system and cooling system."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
9%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Eaton UPS?
I have mixed feelings about the pricing and licensing. I believe that when you sell a UPS, and considering the UPS is a lifeline to a lot of the major corporations, the monitoring solution should b...
 

Also Known As

Eaton Power Distribution Units
Eaton Powerware, Powerware 9300 Series
 

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Sample Customers

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Gamatronic
Find out what your peers are saying about Eaton PDUs vs. Eaton UPS and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
824,095 professionals have used our research since 2012.