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Environmental Monitoring Appliances: A Proactive
Monitoring Approach
by 42U
Excess heat, water, and foreign matter (such as dust
and dirt) are the cause of about 20 percent of datacenter
and server facility equipment failures. Depending on
the size and type of business, experts estimate that
server downtime can cost a business approximately $1,000-$50,000
per hour.
Environmental monitoring appliances, also called
rack monitoring appliances, allow you to actively
monitor multiple variables in your datacenter or server
room. This proactive approach lets you address problems
as soon as they occur, rather than reacting after receiving
a phone call from an end-user when an application is
down, or rushing to investigate a problem after being
notified by text message or pager that a system has
failed.
Environmental monitoring appliances actively allow
administrators to monitor rack, server room, and datacenter
hazards such as extreme heat, power spikes, water leaks,
and intrusion. Based on each unit's available sensors,
an administrator can set minimum and maximum thresholds
for temperature, humidity, airflow, audio, and other
conditions. Most
environmental monitoring devices are SMS/SNMP manageable
(or are used with remote power management solutions
that are SMS/SNMP manageable) so that alerts are sent
automatically when conditions exceed established thresholds
and could adversely affect mission-critical equipment.
Monitor Unauthorized Access
NetBotz
is the leading provider of robust standalone monitoring
solutions, including its standalone WallBotz and NetBotz
central offerings. The
WallBotz 500 uses docked camera pods and sensor
pods that can placed up to 340 feet from a base station,
allowing coverage of multiple rooms or cabinets. An
add-on CCTV adapter allows a CCTV camera to be used
with the device. In addition, humidity sensors, door
contact closure sensors, fluid sensors, and particle
sensors can be used with the docked cameras. Some
NetBotz
products also have built-in microphones for recording
audio clips. Administrators can set customized thresholds
so that alert messages, pictures, and audio clips are
transmitted through SSL encryption by e-mail, SNMP,
text message, FTP, HTTP or web services.
Seamless Integration With Existing Equipment
Some environmental monitoring equipment can also be
layered with existing remote management solutions to
physically monitor intrusion by alerting administrators
to unauthorized entry; for example, when equipment cabinet
doors have been opened. ServerTech's
EMCU-IP integrates with the ServerTech
Power Tower
XL, and supports "normally open" or "normally closed"
door sensors (dry contact closure). When a dry contact
sensor experiences a change in state relative to its
defined threshold, it reports an "error" condition.
In addition, each
EMCU-IP supports two temperature humidity probes
and a water and fluid detection probe. When the EMCU-IP
is integrated with the ServerTech
Power Tower
XL, administrators can view temperature, humidity,
water sensors, and dry contact closures (to monitor
cabinet entry), from the same interface (Enterprise
View software) used to manage and monitor power.
About 42U
42U focuses on providing Facilities and Data
Center Managers with objective and trusted independent
information on
Data Center Power and
Data Center Cooling best practices along with
KVM over
IP and
Remote
Power lights out management to help them reduce
their organization's power consumption. Our
Data Center Management
website has helped millions of IT professionals globally
who search for best practices and technologies to help
them make their computer environment more efficient.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0
Unported License.
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