 Tom here from Lauren systems and this is the unify redundant power system Well, this is a disassembled one because hey why not start with not an unboxing but a disassembling and This is an interesting take on redundant power supplies for well not just Switches but also other devices some of the ubiquity routing equipment some of the ubiquity nvr equipment now supports this and I It's an interesting approach We'll get into the details later in a video about you know why they may have done it this way But I kind of think it's an interesting approach. There are a couple things. I will get to as well that are well I don't know what design flaws, but different design choices They made that maybe can be changed and I'll break down those use cases later before we drive into all that let's first If you'd like to learn more about me or my company head over to Lawrence systems comm if you'd like to hire short project There's a hires button right at the top if you want to support this channel in other ways There's affiliate links down below to get you deals and discounts on products and services We talk about on this channel including a link to our patreon if you'd like to become a patreon supporter We also have a swag store where you can get shirts and other items that are for sale and that changes from time to time What's available and what's not so go ahead and check that out frequently and finally our forums If you'd like to have a more in-depth discussion about this video suggestions for new videos or just reach out Say hi and talk tech our forums are a great place for that all right now back to the content We'll start here at the product page the unified smart power redundant power system model USP RPS is a proprietary redundant power system designed to protect up to six unified smart power Supported devices and I imagine they're gonna be doing more devices in the future on that now a couple things of note note It's called a USP not a UPS There are no batteries in this and I think that is well at least my initial impression was maybe it was gonna have some Type of a battery system in here, but it does not the concept and idea of how this is supposed to work Is any device that supports the redundant power you would purchase those and you would buy them at You know essentially a lower cost as the concept that unify has because they don't put redundant power supplies in but for people who need it you buy this which is a Larger capital expense with an MSRP of 399, but now it can provide six devices a redundant power supply So different concepts essentially in ways of power delivery Right or wrong you can make the argument Why don't they just offer a different model with dual power supply versus not it? Maybe it's just a way to simplify the product line either way It does work and we are going to show how it works to do some testing with it now It does have these six connectors on the back along with three fans one power input and These 24 pin connectors is where is the actual connector that's on there and if you're thinking hey 24 pin connector What does that cable actually look like one? It's pretty hefty beefy cable to and in case you're wondering a 24 pin. Where have you seen a cable that looks like that? I think this would break it if we actually plugged it in but yes, it's the same pinout Well pinout as in the way the little edge connectors are it's an ATX Adapter cable which almost makes me wonder could you use just a ATX cable to extend from device to vice rather than the Proprietary unify cable. I don't know if there's any electronics in here and I haven't Wanted to potentially damage the product by trying it with a Cable I could always I guess check the pinouts and see if they're all just one-to-one or if there's any type of electronics in between I don't know. Maybe I'll do that in the later date if there's some demand for it But for most part I think if you're buying equipment and you want redundant power You're doing it and you don't mind buying these cables which are like $29 MSRP right now Which means we'll probably get a little bit cheaper over time or be able to find a deal on them But I did find it interesting it is an ATX connector and it's a very well made heavy gauge cable This doesn't feel at all cheap. It feels like you're here in metal clink there So I like that they made these you know really solid like I feel comfortable using them I don't have any Qualms about it going well. Do they use thinner wire everything about that feels quality matter of fact The molded edges on there are important because I will tell you It it is pretty solid on there, but one of the other challenges we realized There's a some effort putting in to snap these in they are not coming out matter of fact. This is heavy and If that doesn't give you an idea like these are solidly in there matter of fact you're not hard to remove But there's some effort involved in it, so they're not gonna flop out They're not gonna if you move a switch around or have to slide something around in your rack They're not gonna fall out on you and the durability with this heavy gauge coating and everything on it Yeah, I will say that they did a nice job on product quality in terms of that I did remove this plenum right here and so I wanted to expose the way the power supplies are set up and it's Kind of interesting because it's like there's two power supplies and I'm just guessing it's for different types of power delivery We have this one here and then this one here now This has a lot of different options on here and I noticed the way it's soldered to the board here We have like a whole different series my guess is be for some of the different power delivery Options and then we have this one here, which is your like a heavier gauge rail and all of this is encapsulated. They got the Goo in here. It's kind of hard to see, but it's eventually it's like a hot glue type sealant But it's to keep things really tight so nothing wobbles nothing can wiggle around in there The components can't come loose. So they're encapsulated really really well in here now with all that being said one notable thing is by removing this I've created a bit of a challenge for myself because of the wiring the wires are really tight between this So if you decide to do this, um, I'm gonna have there's gonna be a pause in the video here We jump to Tom after he reassembles this to get the wires put around there also of note in the plenum is A little divider so only one fan is needed for one power supply and the other two fans are for the other power supply and divider But other than that all the electronics in here look solid. Oh, and as chris noted in his video You've probably seen that chris from crosstalk did a video on this as well Uh, they put a network cable in here So we could we just go from the network interface board here to the network here with a Standard a little network cable. Uh, oh the interesting design choice to do that So there is that just so usb in here. I don't know what it's for maybe some type of specialized firmware update Um, and then they have this little power cable that's undoubtedly for the lights that are on the front because the network cable on the The network for this is right on the Front of this device. So it also does have a display We'll get to that once it's booted up and turned on and show you how the display works on it All right now i'm gonna reassemble all this All right, the device is reassembled no magic smoke came out, which is great It wasn't too hard to put that plumb back in I thought it'd be harder than it was with the wires But nonetheless the thing I'll note at first and by the way, there's two devices running right now This is the unify nvr, which also this is the new forebay one. I'm doing a review on it soon That's coming and it also has the connector to do the redundant power supply So I figured I'd test it with something more than just a switch We know it does switches it does the some of the pro switches I'm sure they're gonna have more of their switching line that comes out And of course the I believe the dream machine pro has support for it And we'll probably see more products come out for it But why not try an nvr? And this is where the use case comes interesting from unify standpoint because well Not everyone wants a more expensive nvr that has two power supplies in it But with this now you can have two power supplies for your nvr As well as maybe some of the other equipment that you need So like I said, it's an interesting Approach to it because of the number of devices that it can support But you see the heavy cable plugged in there And let's start with the screen on the front and talk about the features of the screen Because it's kind of I like that that they've added these so I can you know walk up to something in Iraq and look at it But let's take a look at this So this is that same touch screen that we've seen on other unify devices I'm just modified to show the ethernet port so we can see that it's got a connection there We can look at the rps ports so instead of looking at ports in terms of you know, whether or not your Link lights and things like that that you'll see on a Switch they've just modified it to talk about the rps connections So there's one device connected and it's delivering no wattage and all the ones are disconnected now if we unplug The nvr it should take a second here and It now delivering power so it updates in real time and we'll show that again inside the unify But it's pretty nice little, you know touch screen on there They're really intuitive. I this is a one of the features. I think it's just really cool about this Also being able to get information like hey, what's the ip address on here? What's the status on this thing? How long is the uptime? These are just really great features this screen I only thing I wish is that it was on the nvr, but I'll talk about that in my other review Now as far as adopting or setting this up It's like any other unify device if it's on the local network. It can show up There's you know ways you can set in form and I'll point it to something external But it just goes into the standard unify control plane And did nomenclature is similar in terms of the way they label the ports They have a little description below and we have just green to say that it's plugged in but not delivering power And white is disabled now It does also follow like your standard I was a switch with the port configuration options where you can name it and we can say unify nvr And hit apply and the other option in here is to save or auto So it doesn't really have any details in terms of the way you deliver power to it or anything else But I do really like that you can label the ports It would be kind of cool because it does realize when you mouse over what's plugged into it Uh, but it doesn't auto label like that's a feature that I think would be kind of neat Is to say pull all the labels of everything I plugged in and just put them in there So I don't have to do the labeling myself So I'll that would be neat. Um, maybe that's a simple firmware update that they do But you can label them yourself. So not a big deal. I won't dwell on that Other than that it does have stats cpu memory. Just they pulled the same type of menus that you're used to seeing you can open terminal and That works too. So you can We use it and ssh into it using the standard, you know, unify terminal But of course what you really want to know is what happens when there's a power failure So we'll show you right here that I have my hand on it. I'm going to go and unplug our Unify nvr here and actually switch to the screen here and Now we have lost power. Well, not exactly if you notice The unify nvr is quiet. So you didn't hear any noise change, but it's still on I still see a blue light here Now there is a Instant that you know on the screen now it's going to show that it's delivering power on the little front panel screen And there seems to be a little bit longer of a delay Maybe about 30 40 seconds before it shows here and I get the notice But that's you know, uh, it probably just doesn't have The polling frequency that you have with some of the other devices that I think update a little bit faster But nonetheless, it does work exactly as expected where this will switch over It has kept the device on and then a notice will pop up within so many seconds And of course you can have these alerts sent to you to let you know that it's in power delivery mode Now this is where I did reach out to unify to confirm that this behavior is normal And what I mean by that is right now is powering this and it will You know, it's got the notice coming up and lets you know. Hey, we're delivering power We've you know, this device is you know lost power for whatever reason It doesn't know why it lost power doesn't know that I pulled the plug out It doesn't know if the power supply failed But what is important to know that when this occurs this device is running until I power off this device or I reboot this device and why is that important? Well, here's an interesting scenario that you may run into if this power supply did indeed go bad That happens and we know we need a replacement if in any time in between you like to sell this out of the rack You wanted to reboot it and you're like, yeah, I guess the power supply is bad I see some type of part on there and I want to replace it But hey, I can just run it off of this in the meantime, but you can't So as long as this stays up It works But and this is for switches as well and for the nvr and any other devices we've tested with this And like I said, this is confirmed from unify reached out to them on what it will not do Is if we power cycle matter of fact, if we power cycle the unify smart power device It won't power this back up either. So if I were to lose power on this This stops Powering up because it at least initially has to have a power supply on and it will take over But it will not boot up a device and they said this is kind of a safety issue So if the devices are off, they don't want to start forcing power into them, which I it's an interesting case. It does save you from fail over, but it doesn't save you from If you had a massive power outage and everything comes back on and in that on process I know these are edge cases, but I just want to make sure people are aware of the product And how it works that if that power supply were to surge and then go bad on this device This can't work just as a power supply from Zero to boot. It has to be on and lose power from its main power for this to take over But not Boot up for or act as a supplemental power supply in the meantime while you're waiting for replacement if you reboot it. So It works perfectly fine for what we're doing right here. As a matter of fact, I can show you You know, we have the here we have an alert that popped up and it lets us know that we lost power on this particular device So it says rpcs delivering power on port one connected device that has internal power supply failure Or loss of ac so it gives you the notice and like I said, you can have those notices sent to you You see the little power delivery button right here. It tells you what it's delivering how many watts, etc So all that works and we can go here and plug it back in and it works Of note now nvr. You can see a little light blinking in the back here and it's on In fact, we'll do I got a power brick right here. We're going to play a game real quick on off So if this is interesting Oh, I mean notice if we flicker the power on and off This didn't shut off. It did though Restart this device so in that instance if there's a power flicker It seems to still be able to power up this device and start it up So I found that interesting so as long as it doesn't completely shut down And from the loss of power and it's just going to vary because it doesn't have batteries in it But there are at least some power holdings it has uh through the capacitors that are in it So if there's a power flicker it seems to Survive it like the This did reboot this and did come back on but as long as this didn't get completely shut down And because it was in the state of delivering power to this that flicker didn't do it So this is a good thing because if you have a flicker Some type of small voltage spike, which hopefully you have all your rack equipment protected properly This won't be an issue But in the event that a small flicker did that and it took out the power supply to this But this didn't actually turn off then now we have proper failover And it's going to still keep working and powering it because this is now as you can see the light blinking over here Boot it back up and we can just go back to delivering power to it like normal And uh plug this back in and away we go no big deal. So let's uh, yeah head it upside down So now this will do that and now this notice will go away So overall I think the device is interesting is an interesting approach to doing this And when you think about building out a Unify rack instead of having to buy you know each device with redundant power It's you know Going to be a cost effective measure to buy this and have it power all the devices from unify standpoint Someone could just argue. Well, you know make two different models and I get that But that would mean each model they make would have to have either two different skews one with dual power supplies One not and from their product line standpoint You're like that's easier to put this little adapter on there and it leaves more room in the device Because of it. So um, like I said, you know, are you both ways for that? This is the way unify shows to approach it. I think it's kind of neat. We do like it as a device. So if you have Um, you know the need for that The downside is I mean it's a 400 dollar msrp with 29 dollar cables So it's not going to be inexpensive to build this out and then from a cable management standpoint As much as I said, these are awesome. They're heavy gauge and I feel they're super solid I could probably pick up both of these devices by it I will also say that now I have that many more cables behind my Equipment that has to go up and stack and yeah, that's that could create its own challenges Related to that because of the heavy gauge cable. So a lot of thoughts on it Um, it's pretty neat, but from the nvr standpoint too, uh, that sometimes is where mission critical comes in I really like that the uh New unify nvr and yes for those asking the review will be coming soon on it That's why I'm actively testing it including the things I'm doing like that to make sure it provides power delivery properly. 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