I’m currently traveling for months at a time and my homelab has become unreachable to me over VPN due to a unknown complication after a power outage.
Just as a learning experience for all, my mistake was that I set-up my VPN very far down the stack - as a wg-easy app inside TrueNAS SCALE’s apps ecosystem. My very important reason for doing it was that way was that wg-easy allows for setting up client devices with a QR code…
Anyway, the NAS is not booting back up nor do the TrueNAS apps. I should’ve set my VPN up right at the front of the network - on my MikroTik router that also supports Wireguard. The funny thing is I was so happy that my NAS has IPMI and whatnot but now I can’t even access it.
For now the NAS is kept powered on from what I know, it just doesn’t boot. This should help prevent bitrot until I’m back. All important files are backed up on a 3rd party service.
It’s a shame my Jellyfin and Navidrome inaccessible, but I’ll live.
Now I’m thinking about buying an UPS so that this doesn’t happen in the future. I’d like the UPS to be fanless and rackmount, so that limits me to ~700VA territory.
Devices in my homelab pull about 65W idle and spike to say 150W when everything is booting. ISP modem, router, POE+ switch, AP, NAS. I might add another 20W due to a Lenovo M920q in the future.
I only really care about NUT and graceful shutdown instead of long runtime on battery.
I was thinking about this: https://www.apc.com/us/en/product/SMT750RMI2U/
In my country I can get it with new batteries (no front panel) and a network card for NUT for a total of 180 EUR.
Would that work? Would you be afraid of leaving an UPS (it is kinda like a bomb after all) unattended an leaving your home for 6 months at a time?
Line interactive basically means the battery will always be feeding the devices on UPS. Make sure you don’t go over the listed wattage. I learned the hard way and bought an under spec Tripplite, the battery kept dying. I now have a UPS specced out for my router and the Verizon box outside, not anything else on my rack. You should be fine, just saying in the future when you add devices, keep that in mind.
Slight clarification that you described a smart online ups. A line interactive device only supplements power grid with battery in order to keep a smooth 120v should it flutter, for ex if target voltage drops to prevent brownout conditions or fully kick over to battery if power goes out.
A smart online ups runs from the battery 24/7 and is back fed by the grid.
Thought they were synonymous. Thank you for making the distinction.