"Redundant Power Supply" that only works as a backup power for an already powered device, but not as a redundant power rail for boot. That is something that is quite a bit less than what is being promised: a replacement for a dual PSU SKU that people have asked for.
Thank you for opening the device up and going in-depth with your review! It's annoying seeing other channels just showing beauty shots and reading the bullet points so they can say they 'review' Ubiquiti / Unifi products.
The shortcoming you mentioned with the NVR not booting back up if the main power supply dies is a bigger deal IMO. The power supplies in these devices are not easily replaceable. You can’t just slide out the power supply and put in a new one. So you’ll be without a device until your warranty claim gets sorted or until you buy a replacement. You should have the ability to run the devices off of this USP device.
You don't need 2 different lines, just look at servers. You can have a switch with 2 hot swap power supply bays, you sell it with 1 hot swap power supply. Not only you reduce cost of it by selling with 1 supply but you also give it hot swapping capability, so no downtime.
As I said on CrossTalk's video, Removable Power Supplies are cheap from an implementation perspective. They should have just sold units that work with this with an open port for a second PSU. The price comparison for this device is not even close IMO. Where this kind of product could shine tho would be if you could use ONLY this to power the units in the rack. Pull all power completely from the switches. Even better if A: this unit could be linked to another for redundancy, or B: this unit had 2 PSUs itself, and C: the cables could be daisy chained instead of running 6 of those honking cables.
$400+ science fair project. Thanks for review which saved me $458 and a lot of dissatisfaction when discovering that your connected device bricks itself when rebooted.
Also: what if the PSU in the switch fails and it needs to be replaced? Just imagine a nice dense rack with 5 or 6 switched filled with 48 just a bit to long cables with minimal access to the front. Do the process in your head. What is step one in the process of this magical contraption of redundancy? Exactly: pull all the cables, because you have to replace the entire switch bringing down any device connected. So much for redundancy.
Thank you for providing important information. I have been looking for a long time whether switches can be operated only on RPS without standard power supply and it is perfectly explained here. Thank you.
UniFi IMO did this wrong, now you have a single point fail redundant unit, DOA reboot and the nightmare to manage those elephant trunk cables. What makes a lot more sense is for their Pro lines to have component redundant PSU's and add the $30-$100 (PoE++) per component.
This is an interesting concept, but falls short for me. Would have liked each device (switch, router, etc) capable of holding 2 (or more) hot swap/removable power supply's. To save on cost make the second PSU optional. As I see it when the PSU fails in the switch the entire switch needs to be removed from the rack in turn causes an outage.
Thank you for showing how the plug gets removed! I scoured the web for info because they were so snug, thinking I was missing some sort of release mechanism, but nope. Just gotta pull on them like crazy. I work on cars, which often require some serious force to get things loose, and this was the first time I used that kind of force on a piece of network equipment.
Watching this video made me think of 2 possible items. 1) You said people ask why they don't make 2 units, one with a single power supply & one with two power supplies. I understand how this device might be simpler than that. However, what would be even simpler would be modular power supplies and make all the cases to hold 2 power supplies. If someone wants the second power supply, they would buy and extra modular supply and slide it in. This would also simplify replacing a bad power supply. It would also allow different sized power supplies to be sold to support different PoE capabilities. 2) One thing I could think of for not booting off of the RPS is that devices frequently pull more power as they start than they do to run. However, the RPS could stage the outlets to only allow one outlet to power up at a time. This should allow it to absorb the extra power consumption of a booting device.
This would be an acceptable solution if their devices had a user hot-swappable PSU. At least then devices could failover to this unit, a new PSU could be ordered, then replaced with no downtime.
If i recall correctly, the older HPE switches i have at work have a similar option for backup power supply option. Or maybe it's only if you have a DC power rack. Not sure if it's backup or a either AD or DC. i've never used DC on them. I'm just going off an old memory of when we were first looking at buying them. Now the Aruba switches we've gotten recently offer removable as well as redundent power supplies.
you are correct on the HPE switches. Additionally the PowerConnect switches from Dell follow a very similar approach, where you have a DC RPS Unit to have backup Power. This is also very handy if you want to reroute power cables in a network rack
The NVR video output died on the TV behind you when you pulled the power out and returned when you plugged it back in this seems like a BIG issue to me.
Not exactly. The cable was already removed. He flipped the switch in the power strip off and on. I think the nvr was still booting and the tv got the signal around the time when he plugged itinerant the power. It did look like it happened when he plugged it in though. I would have liked to see if the nvr did in fact come back on in that situation.
As far as I know, Dell used to have external 'redundant' power supplies for their switches. I think I still have one of these RPS units in storage at work somewhere.
Is that meanwell a 12V power supply? Judging from the 16V caps near the output, I'd guess it is.. That means the 12V is then buck/boosted to whatever it needs on the second board. Makes it convenient to modify it to run off 12V batteries.
Repeating what others have said here I think... It needs to be able to power the device when there is no AC present. It seems to be just not quite right. Dual PSU's like you get in servers would make sense, supply with one installed sell spares so you can a/ have a second if you want b/ replace on failure. I guess another options would be for the USP to have two AC in and for the devices to have two USP power in maybe? Or make it a stacking power cable. Do away with the USP and have one device capable of powering another device in a stack... ? maybe ? Nice try Ubiquiti but I don't think I'll be buying one any time soon.
I think for this to be of real value the PSU on the devices needs to be hot swappable. I would also argue for redudent power on the RPS. If you can't power on the devices any power outage or accidental update will bring the network down. That is not ok.
I wonder if the reason behind this method is space. Rather than have redundant power supply which takes up space in each unit they have externalized it.
That is an interesting board in there, it shares the same firmware image as the UniFi Switch Flex, both devices are using MT7621 SoC, similar to what they use in the ER-X and it's derivatives.
1 year later Unifi launched UnifF: Network redundancy. They will sell you many UPS (Redundant Power System Pro), basic switch with ups (mission critical) , power cycle device (smart power control)… Would be nice if they announced a solar panel controlled by their software to charge the batteries 🔋 😅
Is this pro hobbyist gear? I can’t see what value this delivers over redundant internal PSUs which would enable replacement of the defective module without yanking the whole switch. It also coalesces the redundant power system for multiple devices into a single point of failure.
Who is this for? It only helps you if you have 2 different circuits like a one with and one without a UPS, but it won't help when a PSU in a switch fails. How is this better than just one PSU in the device and a blanking plate for a second PSU (that you can buy at an additional cost but keeps the price of the initial switch about the same) Also: what is the procedure for WHEN (not if, because it will fail) the internal PSU fails? There is none, just replace the entire switch. That means: downtime. With redundant power supply's in the switch/device you wont have this issue and you can replace a PSU without downtime. How come no-one is addressing this obvious design flaw?
Big cable that is short, that will be fun to manage, management port of front will it fun for anyone who puts their switches facing the back of the rack. I never worked out who's ubiquity market is, as it's seem their marketing is aimed at people who watch TH-cam
So... I will have this device connected to my UDM/Switch/NVR.. I bet that but: should I connect this device into my cyber power ups, or should I connect my UDM / NVR directly into my ups?
Hi can you confirm something for me on the RPS... the fans never come on....even if manually ramped up on the touchpad to 100% . Can you see if yours works.
How many devices can it power at the same time? If you had 6 devices on this that all lost main power at the same time could it keep them all going? This is another limitation that I have seen in similar products.
If your only looking to add redundant power to single power supply devices, I would recommend getting an automatic transfer switch. CyberPower makes one that can be had for about $240.
This is indeed exactly the same solution only with bulky, proprietary and expensive cables
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Interesting device but IMHO falls a bit short ... most likely it won't save you downtime if a regular PSU dies . You will need a full stop to replace the PSU or to install a complete new unit. Anyway, great review, as usual!
Apparently it has a maxumum supply across both rails (the 12V and 50V supplies) of 950 W, so it will power up to 6 devices to that limit. It is conceivable that you have two devices plugged into it that want to draw more than that (some of the big POE 48 port switches?), but it would be a rare scenario. Most of the time I think it would run 6 devices just fine.
Expensive glorified power supply. I did something similar but only use/needed 12 volts so used 3 regular 12V external bricks joined to a common bus with protection diodes. Been working fine for the last 3 years.
Can somebody explain this system to me? I am not getting it! What is the point of having backup power if you can't replace the failing component without powering it down? A server PSU from HP or Supermicro cost 50 euro's, so that's 100 euro's for 2. Retailpricing, I'm sure Ubiquiti would pay much much less. The USP-RPS only becomes financilly feasible when you are using all 6 ports, heck even I would happily pay more for the ability to exchange broken components on the fly. You know what's going to happen? When the primary PSU fails the backup is going to take over. Heck it works fine for now, we don't want the downtime of replacing the device, it costs too much in labour and purchasing, so the errormessage gets ignored. Untill a few years down the line the PSU in the backup devices fails to and then the techs scramble in panic trying to find a spare device in the middle of the night endin up paying a premium. This device does not make any sense! We asked for an easy way to service broken PSU's without downtime and you gave us an overly complicated system which achives exactly the opposite.
So in essence, it's a glorified UPS that can't be powered on anymore once the power cuts out (IE, the battery dies as an analogy). Really useless. They need to fix it so it can boot up from the redundant power system.
Cool idea i guess. But, bad implementation I think. Way too many things that are just like "yeah, that's awesome. But why would you go that route with it... " "Proprietary" cables of short lengths, something else to take up a rack space. Surely it isn't that expensive to just have 2 hot swap psu bays and only include one psu. That would make so much more sense and then it would be just as convenient as every other piece of equipment that has hot swap psu's...
The point you made around 12:53 just emphasizes how dumb this RPS implementation is... They need to stop trying to reinvent the wheel and just put in dual power supplies already.
Hello, Nice videos, I have 1 question for you... It's possible to use pfsense as a Wired & Wireless (802.11Ac or 802.11Ax cards) ROUTER ?? Thank you for your help
Is it only me, or does this feel like something Unify is going to have to abandon in the near future? I hope these ports aren't on ALL Unifi devices; they seem destined for "deprecated" status.
This is an unusually bad fail by Unifi. It's a very poor solution. For it to be of any use the pro units should have PSUs that can be removed/replaced while the RPS is powering them. Alternatively it wouldn't have increased Ubiquity's inventory to supply Pro units with two PSU hot swap modules but sell them with only one in place.
I hate this thing and what they are trying to do with it. Just ship them with spots for two hot swap power supplies and let you buy a second if you need it.
This device is a disappointment for me sure it reduces price but effectively does not deliver what is the principal most buyers will be trying to address. No independent power is a failure… it’s more like a glorified spike protector..
Late to the reviews again, the other main channels beat you by a day or two everytime. As for this product, WOFTAM. PSU's don't die that often, bloody ports blowing is a problem in UniFi switches, keep a spare switch if you need uptime.
"Redundant Power Supply" that only works as a backup power for an already powered device, but not as a redundant power rail for boot. That is something that is quite a bit less than what is being promised: a replacement for a dual PSU SKU that people have asked for.
You will have rack APC on device and on redundant power suply also. Double protection. But is it adventage ? or excuse ?
It’s only $400, what a ‘steal’....
Agree. Don't see the point unless it can boot a device where the PSU is dead.
Thank you for opening the device up and going in-depth with your review! It's annoying seeing other channels just showing beauty shots and reading the bullet points so they can say they 'review' Ubiquiti / Unifi products.
The shortcoming you mentioned with the NVR not booting back up if the main power supply dies is a bigger deal IMO. The power supplies in these devices are not easily replaceable. You can’t just slide out the power supply and put in a new one. So you’ll be without a device until your warranty claim gets sorted or until you buy a replacement. You should have the ability to run the devices off of this USP device.
Yeah, this thing is no redundant at all like how it designed.
Nice to finally see a video on this and see some of the use cases and someone's thoughts on it. Looking forward to the NVR4 video as well :)
You don't need 2 different lines, just look at servers. You can have a switch with 2 hot swap power supply bays, you sell it with 1 hot swap power supply. Not only you reduce cost of it by selling with 1 supply but you also give it hot swapping capability, so no downtime.
Sort of like.. EXACTLY what they do with the edgepower? I agree that's the way to go
As I said on CrossTalk's video, Removable Power Supplies are cheap from an implementation perspective. They should have just sold units that work with this with an open port for a second PSU. The price comparison for this device is not even close IMO.
Where this kind of product could shine tho would be if you could use ONLY this to power the units in the rack. Pull all power completely from the switches. Even better if A: this unit could be linked to another for redundancy, or B: this unit had 2 PSUs itself, and C: the cables could be daisy chained instead of running 6 of those honking cables.
They *were* going in that direction at one time and then backtracked to this. Honestly this company is its' own worst enemy and biggest competitor.
$400+ science fair project. Thanks for review which saved me $458 and a lot of dissatisfaction when discovering that your connected device bricks itself when rebooted.
If it can't be used to boot up devices in case of psu failure, it is a big issue.
ValorHeart its a deal breaker for me. Why would they build something like that?
@@jeremymyers5503 ikr, so pointless. It's a flaw.
Also: what if the PSU in the switch fails and it needs to be replaced? Just imagine a nice dense rack with 5 or 6 switched filled with 48 just a bit to long cables with minimal access to the front. Do the process in your head. What is step one in the process of this magical contraption of redundancy? Exactly: pull all the cables, because you have to replace the entire switch bringing down any device connected. So much for redundancy.
Straight to the point with the guts show right from the start. NICE!!
I'd be more interested if they released an ups version instead
Thank you for providing important information.
I have been looking for a long time whether switches can be operated only on RPS without standard power supply and it is perfectly explained here.
Thank you.
UniFi IMO did this wrong, now you have a single point fail redundant unit, DOA reboot and the nightmare to manage those elephant trunk cables. What makes a lot more sense is for their Pro lines to have component redundant PSU's and add the $30-$100 (PoE++) per component.
a Redundant Power Supply that cannot take your devices off from an off state ... what a great idea !!! (this comment contains irony)
This is an interesting concept, but falls short for me. Would have liked each device (switch, router, etc) capable of holding 2 (or more) hot swap/removable power supply's. To save on cost make the second PSU optional. As I see it when the PSU fails in the switch the entire switch needs to be removed from the rack in turn causes an outage.
Thank you for showing how the plug gets removed! I scoured the web for info because they were so snug, thinking I was missing some sort of release mechanism, but nope. Just gotta pull on them like crazy.
I work on cars, which often require some serious force to get things loose, and this was the first time I used that kind of force on a piece of network equipment.
Watching this video made me think of 2 possible items.
1) You said people ask why they don't make 2 units, one with a single power supply & one with two power supplies. I understand how this device might be simpler than that. However, what would be even simpler would be modular power supplies and make all the cases to hold 2 power supplies. If someone wants the second power supply, they would buy and extra modular supply and slide it in. This would also simplify replacing a bad power supply. It would also allow different sized power supplies to be sold to support different PoE capabilities.
2) One thing I could think of for not booting off of the RPS is that devices frequently pull more power as they start than they do to run. However, the RPS could stage the outlets to only allow one outlet to power up at a time. This should allow it to absorb the extra power consumption of a booting device.
This would be an acceptable solution if their devices had a user hot-swappable PSU.
At least then devices could failover to this unit, a new PSU could be ordered, then replaced with no downtime.
Also would have been better if it could work as a UPS with open modules for additional battery units.
Did you notice the notification on the tv?? 14:18
It says that device lost power! Thats very cooool!!!
The word you were looking for to describe the goop in the power supply is "potting compound".
Thank you.
Lawrence Systems / PC Pickup It’s Silastic - a silicone compound . Potting compound is an epoxy.
If i recall correctly, the older HPE switches i have at work have a similar option for backup power supply option. Or maybe it's only if you have a DC power rack. Not sure if it's backup or a either AD or DC. i've never used DC on them. I'm just going off an old memory of when we were first looking at buying them. Now the Aruba switches we've gotten recently offer removable as well as redundent power supplies.
you are correct on the HPE switches. Additionally the PowerConnect switches from Dell follow a very similar approach, where you have a DC RPS Unit to have backup Power. This is also very handy if you want to reroute power cables in a network rack
The NVR video output died on the TV behind you when you pulled the power out and returned when you plugged it back in this seems like a BIG issue to me.
Not exactly. The cable was already removed. He flipped the switch in the power strip off and on. I think the nvr was still booting and the tv got the signal around the time when he plugged itinerant the power. It did look like it happened when he plugged it in though. I would have liked to see if the nvr did in fact come back on in that situation.
Interesting product... Always like the power cord pull to prove stuff. Great video
As far as I know, Dell used to have external 'redundant' power supplies for their switches. I think I still have one of these RPS units in storage at work somewhere.
I think those 2 power supplies are for 12V and 54V for both powering up the devices electronics and connected poe devices
Is that meanwell a 12V power supply? Judging from the 16V caps near the output, I'd guess it is.. That means the 12V is then buck/boosted to whatever it needs on the second board. Makes it convenient to modify it to run off 12V batteries.
Repeating what others have said here I think... It needs to be able to power the device when there is no AC present. It seems to be just not quite right.
Dual PSU's like you get in servers would make sense, supply with one installed sell spares so you can a/ have a second if you want b/ replace on failure.
I guess another options would be for the USP to have two AC in and for the devices to have two USP power in maybe?
Or make it a stacking power cable. Do away with the USP and have one device capable of powering another device in a stack... ? maybe ?
Nice try Ubiquiti but I don't think I'll be buying one any time soon.
So would an ATS not provide the same sort of thing ? aside for the devices PSU failing
I think for this to be of real value the PSU on the devices needs to be hot swappable. I would also argue for redudent power on the RPS.
If you can't power on the devices any power outage or accidental update will bring the network down. That is not ok.
I wonder if the reason behind this method is space. Rather than have redundant power supply which takes up space in each unit they have externalized it.
Very interesting, thanks for the video.
Take a look at the UNVR-Pro in the Early Access Store.
That is an interesting board in there, it shares the same firmware image as the UniFi Switch Flex, both devices are using MT7621 SoC, similar to what they use in the ER-X and it's derivatives.
It would be good if rps could get info from the ups to tell unvr to shutdown safely
waiting for the NVR video.....
1 year later Unifi launched UnifF: Network redundancy.
They will sell you many UPS (Redundant
Power System Pro), basic switch with ups (mission critical) , power cycle device (smart power control)…
Would be nice if they announced a solar panel controlled by their software to charge the batteries 🔋 😅
Is this pro hobbyist gear? I can’t see what value this delivers over redundant internal PSUs which would enable replacement of the defective module without yanking the whole switch. It also coalesces the redundant power system for multiple devices into a single point of failure.
Who is this for? It only helps you if you have 2 different circuits like a one with and one without a UPS, but it won't help when a PSU in a switch fails.
How is this better than just one PSU in the device and a blanking plate for a second PSU (that you can buy at an additional cost but keeps the price of the initial switch about the same)
Also: what is the procedure for WHEN (not if, because it will fail) the internal PSU fails? There is none, just replace the entire switch. That means: downtime. With redundant power supply's in the switch/device you wont have this issue and you can replace a PSU without downtime. How come no-one is addressing this obvious design flaw?
How about a helpful update on the quirks of the Dream Machine Pro? It looks like a lot of talk in the UniFi Community.
It also is more efficent to have a single larger AC to DC conversion, versus a bunch of smaller AC to DC per unit.
Love your videos man
I got two USP’s I want to know if I can plug the smart power cable from one USP to the other USP so the USP would have a redundant power as well
That 24pin looks a bit costly and inflexible. Especially in days where the VRS migrate to the boards and less and less voltages come from DC PSUs
Big cable that is short, that will be fun to manage, management port of front will it fun for anyone who puts their switches facing the back of the rack.
I never worked out who's ubiquity market is, as it's seem their marketing is aimed at people who watch TH-cam
So... I will have this device connected to my UDM/Switch/NVR.. I bet that but: should I connect this device into my cyber power ups, or should I connect my UDM / NVR directly into my ups?
Someone has the UDMP RPS pinout?
Hi can you confirm something for me on the RPS... the fans never come on....even if manually ramped up on the touchpad to 100% . Can you see if yours works.
How many devices can it power at the same time? If you had 6 devices on this that all lost main power at the same time could it keep them all going? This is another limitation that I have seen in similar products.
The Principal idea is to have the RPS on a UPS so you would have some sort of backup power supply. Which you should have anyway.
Mine constantly flop out no matter how hard I push them in.
If your only looking to add redundant power to single power supply devices, I would recommend getting an automatic transfer switch. CyberPower makes one that can be had for about $240.
This is indeed exactly the same solution only with bulky, proprietary and expensive cables
Interesting device but IMHO falls a bit short ... most likely it won't save you downtime if a regular PSU dies . You will need a full stop to replace the PSU or to install a complete new unit. Anyway, great review, as usual!
Does it only power 1 device at a time or can it power up to all 6 at the same time?
Apparently it has a maxumum supply across both rails (the 12V and 50V supplies) of 950 W, so it will power up to 6 devices to that limit. It is conceivable that you have two devices plugged into it that want to draw more than that (some of the big POE 48 port switches?), but it would be a rare scenario. Most of the time I think it would run 6 devices just fine.
Expensive glorified power supply.
I did something similar but only use/needed 12 volts so used 3 regular 12V external bricks joined to a common bus with protection diodes.
Been working fine for the last 3 years.
13:00 they want you to repair the internal power supply $$
Can somebody explain this system to me? I am not getting it! What is the point of having backup power if you can't replace the failing component without powering it down?
A server PSU from HP or Supermicro cost 50 euro's, so that's 100 euro's for 2. Retailpricing, I'm sure Ubiquiti would pay much much less. The USP-RPS only becomes financilly feasible when you are using all 6 ports, heck even I would happily pay more for the ability to exchange broken components on the fly.
You know what's going to happen? When the primary PSU fails the backup is going to take over. Heck it works fine for now, we don't want the downtime of replacing the device, it costs too much in labour and purchasing, so the errormessage gets ignored. Untill a few years down the line the PSU in the backup devices fails to and then the techs scramble in panic trying to find a spare device in the middle of the night endin up paying a premium.
This device does not make any sense! We asked for an easy way to service broken PSU's without downtime and you gave us an overly complicated system which achives exactly the opposite.
They should at least include two cables.
So in essence, it's a glorified UPS that can't be powered on anymore once the power cuts out (IE, the battery dies as an analogy). Really useless. They need to fix it so it can boot up from the redundant power system.
I just dont get why it isnt a build in ups.... or why they dont have a 4u version whatever, that is
Cool idea i guess. But, bad implementation I think. Way too many things that are just like "yeah, that's awesome. But why would you go that route with it... " "Proprietary" cables of short lengths, something else to take up a rack space. Surely it isn't that expensive to just have 2 hot swap psu bays and only include one psu. That would make so much more sense and then it would be just as convenient as every other piece of equipment that has hot swap psu's...
The point you made around 12:53 just emphasizes how dumb this RPS implementation is... They need to stop trying to reinvent the wheel and just put in dual power supplies already.
UBNT + LTS is AWESOME!!! and UBNT + CrossTalk Solutions is AWESOME!!
Nice!
Save your money and just buy additional equipment in the event your switch or nvr fails
Good luck with cable management
Hello, Nice videos, I have 1 question for you... It's possible to use pfsense as a Wired & Wireless (802.11Ac or 802.11Ax cards) ROUTER ?? Thank you for your help
Is it only me, or does this feel like something Unify is going to have to abandon in the near future? I hope these ports aren't on ALL Unifi devices; they seem destined for "deprecated" status.
This is an unusually bad fail by Unifi. It's a very poor solution. For it to be of any use the pro units should have PSUs that can be removed/replaced while the RPS is powering them.
Alternatively it wouldn't have increased Ubiquity's inventory to supply Pro units with two PSU hot swap modules but sell them with only one in place.
new genera
I hate this thing and what they are trying to do with it. Just ship them with spots for two hot swap power supplies and let you buy a second if you need it.
This device is a disappointment for me sure it reduces price but effectively does not deliver what is the principal most buyers will be trying to address. No independent power is a failure… it’s more like a glorified spike protector..
Garbage device and a waste of money
Late to the reviews again, the other main channels beat you by a day or two everytime.
As for this product, WOFTAM. PSU's don't die that often, bloody ports blowing is a problem in UniFi switches, keep a spare switch if you need uptime.
But he has more info on the power failover issues.