Eaton UPS Reviews

The units we have are for our data center. We have a data center that needs to be up 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The three Eaton units make up half of our two-end power structure.

It's pretty straightforward that these are battery backups. The job of these units is that if we have a power outage, they carry the full load of all of our IT equipment until the generator kicks in.

In our organization, we have not only IT equipment in the data center, but we also talk to equipment throughout the world. We are one of the largest research institutions in our field in the world. We have pieces of equipment all over the world that actually call and talk to equipment in our data center. If we have downtime, there is the potential to lose very expensive assets that are in the field. We really have to be able to trust in the products that we select for this environment. It's one thing if people can't work for a couple of hours. That's terrible and there's a huge monetary value attached to it. But it's another thing if you lose $10 million in equipment, gear, and assets.

Our data center has been up for as long as I've been in charge of it. We haven't had any downtime in eight years. That's the best. A lot of that is the the people that own these units. By way of analogy, a Toyota is very reliable as long as you take it for oil changes. You stop taking your car for oil changes, things are going to die. There's no perfect product out there, but if you stay with the manufacturer recommendations for stuff and the schedules for maintenance, they're going to last forever.

The solution's heat dissipation capabilities allow it to be located near equipment racks without concern about hotspots. It's a square-footage thing. If you can put them in row, then you don't have to build a separate room for stuff and that separate room can be used for a person, storage, anything. 

The most valuable feature is the redundancy built into them. They work. Especially in today's climate, if your data center goes down, a lot of people come knocking at your door because they can't be productive and can't do their jobs. The best endorsement that I can give these things is they've never gone down.

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 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.

Also, the solution's ability to be upgraded online without bringing down our production environment works. We've never had to go down. Then you have Eaton come out and upgrade the firmware on all the modules so that they're all even. It's a simple thing.

It's a plug-and-play machine. If you need to add another power module, you just put it in like you would put a tape into a VCR or a CD into a CD ROM. You just throw it in and it automatically discovers itself. It's easy. When upgrading, you are able to increase the power capacity of the existing hardware until you get to 60kW. They're 12kW modules, so there are five of them. You can increase them by 12kW at a time. It keeps your operations costs down until you need it.

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.

We currently have three Blade UPS's. The newest one was purchased in 2018, and of the other two, one of them was bought in 2011 and the other one in 2010. So we've had them for a while.

The way they're built, they're a really resilient UPS. What happens is that these things are 60kW. There are five 12kW modules. You can lose one of the modules. Depending on your load and what kind of mode you have these in, you can lose up to two of them and things still keep cranking away. Now, what happens when you lose those tools is that you don't have your redundancy. But that's why we have other systems in place in the data center to carry that load. If you're designed right, these things work beautifully.

One of the more important aspects of these things is that they are scalable. Once you buy the pack, this thing is a 60kW UPS and they come in 12kW modules. You can start out with 12kW and get the whole installation done, and then it's just adding what you need in 12kW increments. So the cost to get into them is low and the scalability is there. The ability to expand 12kW modules is good.

Our original install was a full rack. The second one we installed was two modules. And then, about midlife, we maxed that one out with power. For the last one we did, we installed the full rack. But we're a nonprofit, so budgets can be a fluid thing from year to year. Something like this, where you can scale as needed, takes some of the burden off of people like us.

I think they're coming out with a lithium-ion battery option, which is going to decrease the heat load. For me, that's not going to be applicable to replace these things. I don't plan on replacing them for the next five to seven years.

My rule of thumb for all my UPS's is that I only load them to 50 percent because I want a redundant system to be able to handle that load. If I load one of them up to 80% and it fails, then another UPS has to make up for that 80 percent. If it's at 50 percent capacity, that puts it over. It's all in how you're running your data center.

Their field service team is phenomenal. I typically get one of three technicians. I've been working in our organization for 16 years and I've had the same three technicians for about the last eight years. I almost consider them friends, at this point. We've had a couple of issues where they've come out on a weekend. We have a four-hour response time, and they always beat it. If they can't make it in that four hours, I'll get a direct phone call from the tech to let me know where he is. But that's never been an issue getting somebody out there. All in all, it's been a good experience.

Typically, when you call in, they have already worked through to find the problem. All of these throw different error codes. They've almost always been able to fix it on the first call, the first site-arrival. They come with parts in hand if needed. There have been a couple of rare occasions where parts have had to be shipped, but even then, they're there within a day and things are back up.

We make use of both their service plan and their parts replacement plan. Once a year they come out and they do a preventative maintenance on them. At that time they upgrade the firmware and do an overall health check. Since we've owned these things, there's been no added expense, other than the service contracts. Service contracts are pricey, but it's better to have them because if you have one power module go, you've already doubled the cost of the service plan. We've had issues with them like that, but the equipment failure issues aren't a problem because the company is so responsive.

Before Eaton's products we had APC stuff. In terms of the reasons we switched:

• capacity for the footprint was one 
• price was absolutely another 
• the scalability.

Every UPS company makes similar products and it's just a matter of finding what products meet your needs. We needed a 60kW in a footprint that was three-phase, that was 208 volt. This fit the bill. It was the same thing with their 93PM offering. There are two companies that make a 200kW and 208 volt. One of them is Liebert and the other one is Eaton. The Eaton one is about 20 percent cheaper and does the same thing and it is still a reputable company.

I've gone through every phase of these, from designing for them, to installing them, to maintaining them and doing the typical preventive maintenance stuff.

The initial setup was very easy. It's all modular. Installing a UPS is installing a UPS. You bring wires into it, you bring wires out of it. With this thing, it's a rack. Everything's plug-and-play. It's very simple to put this thing together. It's nothing a consumer would ever do, though. You need licensed electricians to come in and do this. Eaton does the startup service, so even when it gets powered on for the first time, you have them come out. They run it through a series of checks to make sure everything is good. UPS's are very dangerous. One thing wired backwards turns it into a hydrogen bomb so you have to be very careful.

In terms of deployment time, everybody's situation is going to be different. We've had different iterations of installation. We had power running under the floor before, and now it's overhead.

There's always a deployment plan. You have to get all the players there: your electrician, etc. For us it was complicated because of where things are located in a building that was built in the 70s. Other people aren't going to have the same experience as we had. 

I'm the only person in our organization who is doing deployment and maintenance of this solution, for this application. I am the data center manager, and if one of them doesn't work, everybody knows.

I don't think you really get a return other than your uptime. We have APC products in there and part of the problem, why they didn't last, is because they weren't maintained properly.

We compared APC, Liebert, and Xtreme.

If it works for your application, go for it. It's a reliable product.

The rack-mountable part of this solution is not really applicable for these because ours is a full-cabinet installation. I've never used one in a standalone where you throw it in a rack with other equipment.

The solution’s power density is the right application for us but I can't say it's the right application for everybody. If you need a 60kW UPS, to me, this is the way to go because it's a really good product and the pricing is far more competitive than APC or Liebert, the other two big players. And Eaton's service is phenomenal.

In terms of the solution's heat dissipation reducing overall cooling costs, I can't say that for certain because I don't have metrics from another product to compare with. Everybody's data center is set up a little bit differently. We have what's called cold aisle containment, so it's very efficient at getting cold air to the front of the machines that need it and discharging them in the back and circulating it back into the cold air. I can say that our cold air containment has saved us money.

I can't say these things save rack space because, when you're in this type of environment, everything takes up the same amount of floor space. This is not a modular thing. The three of them that I have are six feet tall by 28 inches wide by 42 inches deep.

We also have other solutions from Eaton. We have a 200kW UPS, it's a 93PM, and we have PDUs. We have a mismatch of PDUs because of stuff being deployed at different times but they're still working. It would be expensive to replace them all and the monitoring stuff I have is not vendor-agnostic. They're all good products.

I'm not going to say it's a perfect product, but it's pretty close to a perfect product. We haven't experienced issues that can't be easily fixed. We're very happy with what we have now.

The UPSs back up our critical IT infrastructure. And PredictPulse allows us to manage and reduce downtime of the UPSs. PredictPulse monitors the UPS. It's a cloud service. 

We had an air conditioning problem, and we had no monitoring on that equipment. The PredictPulse alerted us that the room was too hot and we were able to solve the problem before it damaged our UPS. It saved our company from having downtime. The UPS has also saved us money, although I know what those numbers would be.

The monthly reporting is one of the most valuable features. It gives us an overview of the last month of its operation and we can see trends that are showing improvements or where availability and performance are decreasing. 

The visibility the PredictPulse service provides into our UPS equipment through the reporting is very good. It gives us very high visibility. We can go into the card and look at every parameter, all the settings, all the values. There are several tabs we can look at. We get a very good understanding of what the unit is doing, all remotely. It's very good.

I like the UPS touch-screen functionality as well. It's good.

The stability of the UPS is very good. There have been no issues.

The scalability is comparable. You can go very small or very big, so it's very good.

Eaton's technical support is good. When we call them, they're knowledgeable. They listen to our questions, they walk us through the steps to go through the process to fix it ourselves. And if not, then they pass it on to have someone come out or to someone else to call us back.

We have different vendors for UPS. We have three or four. But Eaton is our standard, currently, because of the reliability and the reputation of the company and the product.

The initial setup was straightforward. It's very step-oriented. You just follow along; it's a simple process to follow.

Deployment of the product is typical. It's usually a six-week lead-time, which is typical of most equipment. It's not good, but it's just what is expected in the industry.

Our path is to use them in new buildings and new remodels.

We usually use our own mechanical engineer consultant. Eaton is our preferred vendor. Our engineer chooses the product based on our standards and then works with the project team from our company.

For deployment, we usually require one technician from Eaton and our own engineer.

We have seen ROI by going with Eaton, but I don't know what the numbers would be.

We evaluated Schneider and Liebert. 

My advice would be to have a good consultant who understands your power needs and the amount of downtime that is acceptable.

The biggest lesson we've learned from using Eaton products is their reliability. It's there when you need it.

I don't have a problem with the footprint of the UPS units. They're big, but they have a lot of stuff. They are pretty versatile. You can put them close to things. They're good.

We have unstable power in our area and we have a medical device called a Linear Accelerator that we use to deliver radiation to patients. The unstable power was disrupting our operations and the UPS has helped us out with that.

The most important aspect is the fact that it protects the power to the Linear Accelerator. It also cleans the power a little bit and, as a result, I believe our equipment has become more reliable. 

It has been working and has allowed us to have more uptime.

The battery life seems to be pretty good. I don't have a lot of experience with other units of its size, but it does a good job of keeping our unit up. There is no active power management. It just keeps the power up. We haven't had any power failures that are long enough to completely drain the battery. It's been good for small power failures.

In addition, I can access the built-in webpage on the UPS and use that to look at the status.

It's on all the time and monitoring. It gives us an email once a month telling us that our device is working properly. It will also list the power events that happened in that month.

I think the batteries are based on lead-acid technology so they have to be replaced every five years, but with the new lithium-ion battery technology that is available, it might be good if, at some point, they updated their battery technology.

We have been using Eaton PredictPulse for one year.

It seems to be pretty stable.

The technical support is pretty good. In general, I've been able to get somebody on the phone. There was one time that I wrote an email that didn't get a response. Overall, it has been okay. It's not five-star service, but I've generally been able to get somebody on the line.

Neutral

It was installed in a day, but it took a while for it to be delivered. We had to hire somebody to bring it into the room where it was going to be installed, and then we had to bring in electricians. The setup itself was relatively straightforward. The hands-on time was pretty quick, but in terms of logistics, it took several weeks. At the end, somebody came from Eaton to turn it on.

We bought it indirectly through Elekta, which is the manufacturer of our Linear Accelerator, so the buying process was reasonable. Elekta purchased it for us. We paid Elekta and Elekta paid Eaton.

Elekta did the project management. The implementation was a little bit rough. We didn't fully understand what was needed, but that wasn't Eaton's fault.

We don't do anything to maintain it. It's pretty self-sufficient. The initial deployment required two people on our side, but that was just for one day.

It's not like we have any additional revenue as a result of using the UPS but it does improve our reliability. There is a positive impact in terms of patient care, although it doesn't necessarily translate into additional dollars. We were having issues with our Linear Accelerator that have been stabilized. More uptime means we're providing better patient care.

Elekta recommended this UPS and they set it up. We didn't really shop around because this was their solution.

It's a good device.

We have two of the 9395s and eight of the 9315s. They support our data center and the call center. We have them in place to ride through any power blips or outages. They're part of the critical systems for the business. The UPSs have to be in place and keep our data center running and call center running without any kind of interruption.

They have saved our organization from downtime. At one point we lost both utility feeds and the UPSs rode us through until the generators kicked on. We then ran on generator for 30 minutes and, after 30 minutes, the power came back. The UPS was only active for seven seconds. It had to maintain power in the data center until the generators came on. But if we didn't have the UPSs in place, we would have lost power to the data center and that would have shut our business down. We can't do business without our data center. Although it can get back up and working fairly quickly, it would still impact customers for days.

I don't know how much money having the UPSs saved, but I would say it was a substantial amount.

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.

The touchscreen functionality, being able to go to the UPS and look at readings, etc., is pretty intuitive. It's user-friendly. It's useful to know where you're at.

In terms of the unit's footprint, it fits well, considering its functions.

We also use the UPS Service Plan. We have a contract with them for that. It's very good. We use it all the time. We have to do PMs (preventive maintenance) on the UPSs throughout the year, as well as on the batteries. We've got enough units that they'll bring an extra tech in. I, myself, don't do anything with them, other than monitor them onsite. They are pretty much a fixture, like a piece of the building. They're in, they run, they do their thing. And if we get an alarm we call a tech and he comes out and he takes care of it.

We haven't had any issues with stability.

The scalability is good. With the 9395s you can buy extra pieces that connect up to the UPS which will expand the capacity of the UPS. Then you have to buy extra batteries. But you can scale it from 250 all the way up to 1.1 megawatts.

When we call a ticket in, we usually get somebody out here within an hour or two. In general, their tech support is really good.

We have had to contact them for issues. 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.

We were using an older style, the 9315s from Eaton. But we've always been using Eaton UPSs for backup power.

We have to bring an Eaton tech out to do the initial setup. It's a specialized piece of equipment with proprietary information, programming, and all of that. You've got to make sure that all the parameters are right, so it's not something you can just do yourself.

Once it gets powered up and everything's wired up, it takes about an hour. There are no preparations that we need to do on our end before they implement.

Once they're up and running we need one person to maintain all the UPSs.

I don't know how to put a number to ROI, because I don't know, if we went down, how that would impact the business from a cost perspective.

The Service Plan we have is on a three-year contract.

We looked at Liebert, but we liked the Eaton better. They were comparable when it comes to cost. The difference was efficiencies.

If you absolutely do not want to lose power to your computers, your data center, or any piece of your business - if your business has to be running 100 percent of the time - you have to have a UPS in place and a generator. For us, it's just a part of the process of keeping the data center up. It's a piece of equipment that does a specific job so that we don't see any kind of power hiccups or outages.

We don't have any issues with the Eaton UPSs, they do really well. We seem to be pleased with everything, the way they're functioning now.

Eaton UPSs are primarily used in corporate data centers. It's the UPS before the generator starts.

We like the easy-to-read display screen and the web configuration where you can manage the unit.

The technology is reliable.

We haven't had any issues with it. We've been very happy with the units.

They could enhance their software, but overall, it's a good solution.

We have several versions of Eaton UPS deployed.

Eaton UPS is a stable product.

It is scalable. You can purchase units with a larger battery supply, which will give you more downtime. You can coordinate that and figure out how much battery time you need based on your risk level and the configuration of your generators.

The technical support is excellent.

The initial setup is relatively straightforward.

It is deployed and the units are maintained by an Eaton Professional, 

On our end, there is very little interaction from the end-user.

I don't have anything negative to say about this solution. 

In the time that we have had it, it has been an excellent product that's very reliable. We haven't had any problems with it. 

The support is really good. They offer quarterly support calls, which are very helpful.

It only does one thing, it gives you the power and all the information you need. There are not many features on there. It includes a power management feature. 

I don't see any features that will help me more than what is already there.

I would rate Eaton UPS a seven out of ten.

It is for data center support to keep our equipment powered up. It is for backup power.

It is a redundant UPS. We have an A and B for power.

We have not had any outages or downtime using this UPS. It has kept us from having any outages.

It lets us know about any issues with the power. It is very sensitive to any surges or sags in power. We receive those messages and know when they are happening.

I would like to see there is a little more clarity on what the issue is on the notifications that we receive. This would make it easier for us. What we have to do now is sometimes go to the UPS to figure out exactly what the issue is, because it's not always clear.

It is a quality product. As far as I know, we have had no failures that I can think of. It has been very stable and reliable.

Some of the models are much more scalable. Our module has an option where I can add a module to it, so it is pretty flexible.

We currently have two Eaton UPSs on two different floors. One is a Powerware product, then Eaton purchased Powerware. We don't have any plans to purchase another right now, as there isn't a need.

When I think about who I have used, technical support has been very good. We talked at different times about battery replacement and some of the reports. I got clarity on what reports would say, for example.

The service side is very good at what they do, and because of that, we have had no issues.

We previously used GE. We switched to Eaton because we didn't have the best experience with GE. We had issues with their equipment, such as a failure.

It was simple to get it installed. We had it up and online quickly. It didn't take us very long to get it up and running. The process was seamless and easy to do.

We used Eaton's consultant for the deployment. My electrician worked directly with them.

For deployment and maintenance, there is usually one technician who we have come onsite. Then, there is just a computer operator in my group who gets them access to it.

It saves our company money. Because if there is an outage, it is approximately $1 million a minute for an outage. Since we are a very large credit union, outages would be very expensive for us.

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 also evaluated Liebert, Schneider, and APC.

Liebert was a good alternative. Back when I started my career, we had a Liebert UPS in one of our data centers. It was very reliable. They were definitely a consideration. 

Part of what we looked at was Eaton service models in the area where we are located. They had plenty of technicians available. The product is made here in this area, so parts are readily available. 

There were quite a few reasons that we leaned toward Eaton, and it also had good recommendations from others.

Take a good hard look at it. I don't think you will find another UPS that is more reliable than theirs.

I have been very happy with it. It is an improvement over the other UPS that we use. I like what they have brought to us for a solution.

It's about average size compared to others. It might be a bit smaller, but it's about what I would expect, size-wise.