> a cheap UPS to keep it running in case of power outage (which happened once in the past year, so it might be a bit overkill).
I don't think this is overkill, I think it's necessary. A UPS is pretty cheap compared to the completely-uncontrollable chance of losing power in the middle of working on something. Sure, there's autosave and most things are relatively recoverable, but this is just such a cheap investment (at least, for most people who will be reading this forum, I understand it isn't for everyone) compared to such a scary reliance on something that is not very reliable (which makes me very upset about income disparity, it's something everyone should be able to have).
My power is extremely unreliable so maybe I'm a little biased - we get brown-outs (power drops for maybe 2 seconds and comes back) maybe 3-4 times a year, which is wild imo for what should be a very well-developed area (relatively wealthy suburb of Chicago) but it's a pretty old building so not too surprising I guess. That said I will NEVER have a desktop setup with a UPS, and I encourage absolutely everyone to do the same.
I also have a wireless card so that in an emergency I could tether my pc to my phone for internet if need be, and I highly recommend this as well. It's enough to reconnect and send a couple Slack messages quickly and then disconnect again and wait out an outage, without driving up your data bill. (Just use your phone? Maybe, but I don't have everything installed, and I can't type for shit on my phone keyboard anyway)
Have the feeling this is definitely more of an American problem. I'm from a European country and the last time I have had any sort of power outage is more then 10 years ago (can't even remember it to be honest). Even with the current surge in prices the production and transmission system is still reliable as ever.
Here in Western NJ, ash trees have been decimated by the emerald ash borer. The big impact is in communities with lots of ash trees are now getting constant power outages from dead trees coming down on lines. The power company is supposed to trim back dead trees near the lines (ever since Hurricane Sandy), but the ash decimation has overwhelmed them.
Our little town of 6,000 or so loses power 3-4 times a year. One road with lots of ash trees loses power 10x a year.
UPSs also have other benefits in power outages as well, once you've shut the computer down. You can use it to keep LED lighting on at night. Charge phones and tablets. Moreover, if your power is out, you might still have 5V on your cable line -- so if you can deliver the 8-9W the modem wants (and likely similar to your router) you can still have your normal internet service.
If you have a beefy enough one (we're talking $200+ UPSs here), you can use it to power a modest refrigerator for a bit, getting temps back down to proper levels to prevent food spoilage if you end up with a long term outage that spans 48-72 hours. Most fridges only pull 120-180W when they run, and depending on the temp and time of year, only run the compressor for 15 to 20 minutes at a time. Plugging the fridge into it once or twice on the 2nd and 3rd day of an outage can save you a TON of grief and food spoilage.
I used to use UPSes at home, which protected me from a handful of power outages.
However, those lead acid batteries don't last forever, and when they fail you're worse off than using a dumb regular surge protector. Now you have to replace and responsibly recycle the battery.
For me that e-waste became impossible to justify. A couple of power outages a year is completely acceptable for most home servers.
I think a UPS a good idea for Raspberry Pis. They are rather sensitive to power transients, and anything that causes a crash and leaves the SD in a not-happy state means it won't boot! (A known issue with the Pi.)
I use a UPS and log2ram (which moves the most active directories to a RAM-disk) and have found the Pis to be perfectly fine home servers:)
"I don't think this is overkill, I think it's necessary. A UPS is pretty cheap compared to the completely-uncontrollable chance of losing power in the middle of working on something."
I'm using a laptop as a server and will buy a UPS for my modem/wifi. That combo will offer many hours of uptime without power.
I don't think this is overkill, I think it's necessary. A UPS is pretty cheap compared to the completely-uncontrollable chance of losing power in the middle of working on something. Sure, there's autosave and most things are relatively recoverable, but this is just such a cheap investment (at least, for most people who will be reading this forum, I understand it isn't for everyone) compared to such a scary reliance on something that is not very reliable (which makes me very upset about income disparity, it's something everyone should be able to have).
My power is extremely unreliable so maybe I'm a little biased - we get brown-outs (power drops for maybe 2 seconds and comes back) maybe 3-4 times a year, which is wild imo for what should be a very well-developed area (relatively wealthy suburb of Chicago) but it's a pretty old building so not too surprising I guess. That said I will NEVER have a desktop setup with a UPS, and I encourage absolutely everyone to do the same.
I also have a wireless card so that in an emergency I could tether my pc to my phone for internet if need be, and I highly recommend this as well. It's enough to reconnect and send a couple Slack messages quickly and then disconnect again and wait out an outage, without driving up your data bill. (Just use your phone? Maybe, but I don't have everything installed, and I can't type for shit on my phone keyboard anyway)