FAQ        

POWER TIPS FOR END-USERS

If you experience one of the problems listed below, you are highly encouraged to read on.
1. Your computer re-boots for no apparent reason.
2. Your computer locks-up for no apparent reason.
3. Data Files have been lost or corrupted for no apparent reason.
4. Your CMOS setup has been forgotten for no apparent reason.
5. You receive occasional error codes when reading files.
6. Hardware including power supplies, or logic card has failed.
7. The image on your CRT appears to change size or has other distortion.
 

WHY CHOOSING THE RIGHT POWER PROTECTION IS IMPORTANT

Nowadays, we are in an IT society and highly rely on every kind of electrical system. No matter where you are and what
you do you always need power to activate your equipment. You cant escape to flint Stone Age and live in the dark. As you are familiar with many computer viruses, but you probably don't know here are many power viruses around your power-connected equipment and always ready to attack your system. Totally shutting down or damaging your system are two of the most common problems you may encounter.

Power Quality is worse than ever. Problems such as blackouts, brownouts, surges and noises are happening with increased frequency. According to a study conducted by Bell Labs, blackouts have increased by 150% since 1972. IBM says that a typical computer is subject to more than 120 power problems per month. There is a little that power companies can do to minimize the risk because the power is subject to numerous outside influences as it travels to the customer sites.
 

 POWER PROTECTION BASICS

It is getting harder and harder for utility companies to provide the type of clean, consistent, and continuous power required by today's growing businesses. Buildings have aging electrical infrastructure designs, making it increasingly difficult to supply
occupants with the clean, continuous power needed for sophisticated computing and network equipment needs. And the power utilities generation and distribution problems are not expected to improve in the near future. According to industry experts, it takes approximately a decade to get a new power plant online, and concerns about nuclear power and fossil fuels have stifled the construction of new generating facilities.

The ever-increasing deployment of networks, client/server computing platforms, and distributed computing systems have raised potential adverse impact caused by sustained power outages. According to a Contingency Planning and Management Survey, 45.3% of all computing and network equipment of data loss failures reported are attributed directly to power failures or surges.

The damage can be great. In just a typical example of a car hitting a utility pole, primary distribution lines are shorted, causing an electrical surge followed quickly by a complete loss of power. The surge travels instantaneously through the electrical distribution wiring into a server via the electrical outlet. The motherboard and its components are damaged, and data contained in the system memory is lost. After the surge passes an all power to the server is lost, unprotected hard disk can crash and critical data stored
in the disk controller's cache can be instantly lost. As a result, the business has suffered a damaging loss of critical data, which may or may not be recoverable.

The first step in the protecting and enterprise from power failure is to understand and prepare for it. If an enterprise has not already experienced some type of power-related incident it most likely will in the future.
 

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TYPES OF POWER FAILURE

Typically, there are twelve types of power anomalies and/or failure incidents experienced by enterprise computing and network user:
1. Power failure Blackouts): They are most obvious and annoying power viruses. Blackouts account for different levels of disturbance in different countries.

2. Power Sag (Dip): It is a short term low voltage and will reason in computer loss, bits errors in data, power supply damage and equipment shutdown.

3. Voltage Spikes and Surges: This Power Virus is spread by equipment inside your facility. When air conditioners, motors, or elevators terminate and activate, they can result in immediate large increases in voltage inside the electrical system. Other causes include grid switching and lightning strikes (which may miles away can produce surges and spikes measuring thousands of volts at your electrical outlets)

4. Under Voltage (Brownouts): Where the electricity (i.e voltage level) dips below a specified range, but can still power electrical equipment-although often causing damage.

5. Over voltage (Swells): Where the electrical (i.e. voltage level rises above a specified range, but can still power some electrical equipment-although often causing damage. it will result in equipment overheating, electronic component hitting and stress, equipment shutdown and power supply and component damage.

6. Electrical line Noise: It produce small but rapid power fluctuations that cause aberrations in the smooth wave shape of the power line ( There are different kinds of electrical line noise and they can all be very damaging to data and equipment). This power virus will result in garbled data, computer data errors, computer lockup, network interface card failure, improper results from test equipment.

7. Frequency variation: This power virus will alter equipment performance and errors in time based systems.

8. Switching Transients: This virus is circulated by electrical neighbors such as switch mode power supplies, grid switch, power factor correction, industrial equipment like plasma cutting, MRI scanner or X ray equipment and switch-on and of loads in home and office such as lamp dimmers, motor speed controllers and thermostats.

9. Harmonic Distortion: This Power viruses will result in equipment overheating, electronic component heating/stress,
equipment shutdown, power supply and component damage, erratic equipment operation, reduced server life, garbled/from our last raptor.

10. Irregular Voltage output: This power virus varies from one area to the other. In the former time, irregular voltage devastated with linear power supplies. Failures are common.

11. Backdoor Disturbance: This Power virus damages your system through a channel you are not aware of (Communication cables ). Although it is not a main connection, fatal electrical disturbances can enter IT systems via modem and phone lines,
network connections and I/O cables.

12. Common mode voltage hassles: It is highly possible the most dangerous power virus confronting IT users today is common-mode voltage hassles. They can result in unexplained data losses, glitches and system failures.

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Total failures or blackouts, constitute a complete loss of electrical power to the networking or computing equipment. It can be total failure throughout an entire geographical location, a single building or group of buildings, or a single electrical panel within a building. These failures can cause systems and network crashes, PC lockups, and corruption or loss of valuable data from servers workstations. These blackouts are often caused by electrical storms, auto accidents involving utility poles, an electrical utility company's inability to meet user demand (e.g., during sustained hot weather conditions), or simply by the inability of a buildings infrastructure to handle demand on an overloaded circuit.

Severely reduced voltage from the power utility, or a brownout occurs when the utility company cannot meet customers demand.
This usually occurs in summer months when the use of air condition during the times of prolonged heat waves taxes the pool of  available power. Sometimes this brownouts are planted by the utility and are directed at a specific locations within their power grid. In this case they are called rolling brownouts. Today's network and computing equipment is designed to operate using electrical power that fail within a specific acceptable range. Brownouts occur where the electrical supply voltage drops below the level. This lowered voltage places a strain on the electronic components contained within the computing and network equipment and can limit their operational life. It can also cause immediate failure of those electronic componenents.

Sags, spikes, and surges are power anomalies caused by electrical storms, extraordinary demands for power from the utility, and other electrical equipment. For example, the starting of an electrical motor, like an elevator, can sometimes cause momentary sag as the power source tries to meet demand, and then cause a spike once the motor has started and meets less electrical current to sustain operation. These anomalies are rapid, momentary decreases (Sags) or increases (surges or spikes) in voltage levels at the electrical outlet. They can cause loss of data, total loss of a hard disk, and even catastrophic damage to the network or computing hardware in use.

Electrical noise is electromagnetic interference (EMI) caused by electrical storms, noisy electrical equipment (e.g., motors , welding equipment, etc.), fluorescent lighting, and even radio transmitters. It can cause events such as system lockups, temporary lapses in computing, circuit connection termination, data transmission errors, and even data corruption or loss.
 

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