3 Tips for Data Center Security
We put a high focus on protecting the data center from environmental disasters, like extreme temperature and humidity, as well as water leaks and poor air circulation. However, there are other considerations to be made in keeping the data center safe, like physical security conditions. Is all of the sensitive equipment being protected from unauthorized personnel?
Of course the first order of business is to set standards and procedures that make those in charge of data center security aware of exactly what is acceptable clearance and what is not. However, as is true for almost any kind gateway, mote, or minefield, people will find their way around. So there must be systems in place that keep us alerted to situations that are potentially hazardous.
The Ravica SecurityProbe can increase the level of data center security by providing insight in the following three areas.
Keep an eye on your data center
As the saying goes, “Seeing is believing.” We need to be able to see with our own eyes that everything is truly alright before we can really breath easy. Nothing beats being there, but if you can’t be there, then a video camera presence is the next best thing. With the pan-tilt dome camera, your SecurityProbe can watch up to four separate locations. It can even be programmed to move to a specific location when an event is triggered from any type of sensor. It will also take a series of snapshots and include them with email alerts when triggered by any sensor.
Batten down the hatches
It seems obvious, but the most important places to monitor in secure areas is the entrances and exits. That means, tighten up the doors and windows. Ravica security sensors are contact sensors that are perfect for letting you know when a door or window has been opened. The idea is relatively simple. There are two contact plates. When they are separated, like when the door edge moves away from the frame as it is opened, the sensor switches to an alarm status.
What’s in motion?
A great fail safe, in addition to watching the doors and windows with sensors and cameras, is monitoring for motion. Motion sensors can also sense for unauthorized access, or can simply be the trigger for telling a camera to pay attention to a certain zone. Make sure that the right amount of movement sets off the sensor in a sensitive area and it can mean the difference between knowing during or after a security breach has occurred.
Whether you are guarding Fort Knox or your small corporate data center, putting a SecurityProbe and the appropriate sensors in place can go a long way towards keeping unauthorized personnel away from your sensitive equipment and information.
~ Jon Mills
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Recommended Server Room Temperature and your Ravica SensorProbes
Filed under: Intelligent Sensors, environmental monitoring, temperature monitoring
Today’s network meetings subject was “Recommended Server Room Temperature”. It appears that our new goal is to make sure that the server farm keeps its temperature at a constant rate. They used the network operations policy for University of California, San Diego as an example. It’s funny, but nobody knew what that temperature should be.
After some research, I found out that the general recommendations suggest that you should not go below 10°C (50°F) or above 28°C (82°F). This is a wide range, remember these are the extremes. It is far more common for server rooms to maintain a temperature around 20-21°C (68-71°F). Keeping it at that temperature can be difficult, there are many variables to address.
I am going to set the thermostat at 55°F and monitor it’s status throughout the day with our Bitsight8 and multiple temperature and humidity probes. I have 20 days to gather this data and report on it. My guess is that we will have to adjust the set temperature a bit before we make the network policy.
~ Jimmy D
Data center power outage alerting
Filed under: Data Center, Intelligent Sensors, environmental monitoring
We have already discussed the importance of monitoring temperature and humidity in the data center. Making sure that the investment your company has made into its networking hardware is well protected is paramount. However, normal temperature fluctuations are not the only potential danger to data room equipment. Power outages are another potentially hazardous event.
You’ve probably already placed UPS devices at the appropriate positions within the data center; which is the first step to protecting your investment. But if the power fails in the middle of the night and your UPS kicks in to keep your vital equipment running, how long will the battery backup keep your servers up and running, or better yet, your air conditioners and HVAC systems?
With the Ravica AC Voltage Detector, you can receive alerts when your systems switch to battery backup. Knowing immediately when your equipment is no longer running on line voltage can mean having the extra time to get a generator up and running or the core power issue resolved before batteries run out of juice and other systems begin to fail.
Temperature can even come back to bite us in this scenario. If your data room isn’t getting the proper cooling and ventilation, because the air conditioners or HVAC systems are no longer operational, you are now not only contending with power failures, but data center hot spots and equipment overheating as well.
The AC Voltage Detector is a simple sensor that works with any of the Ravica SensorProbe models. It detects voltage at 50 VAC to 250 VAC and runs on a open/closed contact switch system. You simply plug the cable into your UPS, like you would with any other piece of hardware. When the sensor detects the presence of line voltage, it reports a NORMAL status. When the power fails and the UPS switches itself on, the sensor automatically detects the change and reports an ALARM status.
Perhaps not every scenario calls for that extra line of defense, but when you consider the cost of data room equipment and the potential cost of that equipment’s failure, some extra measures to ensure its stability just make sense.
~ Jon Mills
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Should we Recycle Server Room Heat?
Over the weekend, I was watching System, which is one of my favorite shows on Revision3 .com. One of the questions was on how to use the excess heat generated by computers to heat a room. I am a big supporter of the “Reduce, Reuse and Recycle” philosophy, and thought that was a great idea.
After some hard and heavy Google’n, I was excited to find out other ways people have used this wasted server room energy. The story of a Mid-Western college saving their greenhouse caught my eye.
“The University of Notre Dame’s high-performance computing (HPC) department has taken things a step further. It now reuses the heat generated by its servers to warm up a historic greenhouse that the city of South Bend, Ind., has threatened to shut down.”
By using the heat from the server they are saving the university $100,000 on cooling costs and the owner of the botanical garden, the City of South Bend, Indiana, another $70,000 on heating costs. It’s win-win for everyone.
Now I am trying to figure out ways to implement this type of thinking here at work and at home. I think that my first step would be to add another temperature probe to the back of the server rack. This should give me the data that I need.
Maybe I can use the excess heat to warm up my cube. I’ll update you with what I find out.
Office Humidity Monitoring
Filed under: General, Intelligent Sensors, SensorProbes, environmental monitoring
Until a few years ago I didn’t worry much about the humidity level in the office. One day I was commenting to one of my coworkers about how my body is prone to more static electricity shocks in the winter. He brought up the topic of humidity.
I decided to look into what the proper humidity level should be in our office. I found out that when relative humidity is kept at about 50%, employees have fewer respiratory problems, as well. Humidity at too high a level makes the office feel “stuffy,” not to mention the problems it can cause with bacterial or fungal growth.
Humidity lower than 50% can cause discomfort by drying out the mucous membranes, contributing to skin rashes. Dry conditions cause electrostatic charge on both office equipment and their users. Ouch! Wouldn’t want expensive electronic equipment to start having problems.
Here is the humidity level in the office of one of our customers:
Does it look healthy to you? He decided to put the humidity probe on the internet so that the land lord could see it from the internet. If it isn’t fixed, he could setup the probe to email him every time a threshold is breached. HA!
Help Desk: Got password?
Filed under: General, Intelligent Sensors, SensorProbes, environmental monitoring
One of the most common support issues, if not the most common support issue, encountered with Ravica equipment is also one of the simplest. Whether you have turned on the Administrator password option without specifying a password, or if you have recently found yourself in charge of maintaining the environmental monitoring equipment, or if you just plain forgot it; it can be frustrating to get locked out of your SensorProbe.
The main thing to remember is, “remain calm.” We are here to help. The first thing to try is to log in using the default password of “public“. Of course, make sure to leave out the quotation marks.
If you are not able to log in with the default password, then someone has set a password, and it very well may be lost forever. Again, “remain calm.” We can still help. Just go to the Ravica Customer Support page and complete the form with your information. Make sure to specify your product model. In the description box, make sure to note the MAC Address (found on the bottom of the SensorProbe) of the unit in question.
Now, give a support repesentative some time to respond (usually within 24 hours), and they will get back to you with a Master Password.
From there you can log into the device with that password. However, it is a good idea to reset your Administrator password and use that. As always, make sure to keep sensative information in a safe place and don’t use passwords that are too obvious.
If you have any other support related inquiries, or if you are looking for more informaton about password management, feel free to contact us via email or call us at 207-324-8173.
~ Jon Mills
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Temperature monitoring during the summer months
Filed under: Data Center, Intelligent Sensors, environmental monitoring
Summer is nearly upon us, and with summer comes a natural rise in temperatures. It’s no secret that with global warming the Earth’s global surface temperature is expected to rise anywhere from 2.0 to 11.5 °F, during this century. Luckily for us, technology, although perhaps a major part of the initial problem in the first place, can help keep the the elements at bay.
More and more innovations are being made into maintaining data center environmental stability, like Sun’s new rack cooling door. While it is important to take the necessary steps in shaping the temperature, humidity and airflow appropriately for your computer rooms and data centers, it is just as important to have fail safes in place for when the environment inevitably strays outside recommended operating conditions. Whether its a faulty air conditioning unit or a blown electrical circuit, it is paramount to the integrity of the company’s critical business applications that a quality monitoring solution be in place.
Temperature monitoring solutions come in all shapes and sizes, but there are solutions for every company and every data center. Ravica offers environmental monitoring solutions that can help even the smallest company protect its hardware investments. Summer brings with it more than just higher temperatures. Many parts of the globe experience fluctuations in humidity as well. Not to mention that with high temperatures comes the need for air conditioning units to be more reliable and more effective. Ravica offers solutions to these other key problems with airflow monitoring sensors and humidity monitoring sensors. Whatever the particular needs are of your server closet, data center or computer room, you are sure to find a solution among Ravica’s line of intelligent environmental sensors.
- Jon Mills
Using SensorProbes to prove the office temperature is too low.
Filed under: General, Intelligent Sensors, SensorProbes, environmental monitoring
I was angry. Well, maybe just a little mad, but no matter what, I was still upset. The office was unbelievably cold, and it had been going on for way too long. By cold, I mean goose bumps and jackets every afternoon. When I would go for a lunch time walk (as I often do), my muscles would cramp, due to the drastic temperature change. As I said, it was cold.
Needless to say, something had to be done. I complained to the powers that be, but their first response was less then rewarding. Answers like “It’s in your head,” or “You are right under the vent,” were explored; but I knew that they were wrong.
Luckily, things got worse. The temperature was getting colder and for longer periods of time. More people were saying things like “Gee it’s cold,” or “Hey, are you cold?” and “Turn up the heat or I am breaking up the conference room table and building the biggest bonfire this side of Boston.” In one remote section of the office there were a group of dissidents that wanted to change the company dress code so that it included a L.L Bean Arctic Parka.
At this point I decided to throw on my Jimmy D detective hat and get some proof. Since I am Uber Geek, I decided to use the tools of my trade, I would need technology!
I integrated a high scale, super conductive data collection station into my work environment. To be honest with you, it surpasses the one that I once viewed at MIT that is currently used to monitor global warming. In reality, I secretly moved my BitSight2 temperature probe from the server room over to my desk. I then setup Denika to trend its SNMP data. With Denika I was able to set a minimum temperature threshold, which would alert me when the temp fell.
I diligently collected data for two weeks. I even adjusted the threshold, as I saw the temp get lower and lower. The data was conclusive. I had my answer. I could now confidently register my complaint to the powers that be and demand change! At the same time, I now had the ability to defuse the previously described uprising. Viva Data! Viva Jimmy D! Maybe I need to get out of my cube more often?
Again, in reality, I took this data to my boss and quickly showed him that in the afternoons were seeing an average of 54 degrees, mornings were a bit higher. He took this to building management and they are currently in the process of finding out what the issue is.
The good news is that my cube is getting warmer, the bad news is the I got my BitSight taken away!
Higher temperatures keep data centers cool for U.K.’s weather forecaster
The U.K. government’s Meterological Office (Met Office) wants to increase the temperature of some of its data centers, according to a report in eWeek Europe. While it’s traditional to keep data centers cool, the Met Office wants to move out some of its more temperature-sensitive machines, such as tape drives, presumably so that it would enable it to be more efficient at keeping the temperature for the rest of its equipment on an even keel.
The government agency is using its modeling know-how to model the airflow around servers in its data centers to help it locate hot- and cool-spots. The knowledge would enable it to better distribute equipment, according to the article.
As InsideHPC points out, the move is similar to efforts deployed by Argonne National Laboratory’s Leadership Computing Facility. The agency shaved $25,000 a month off its electricity bill by using Illinois’ cold temperatures to chill the water to cool its systems.
Jeff Sims, ALCF project manager told HPCwire: “The trick is to find the warmest chilled water temperature you can live with at a given machine load, thus reducing the electric load on the chillers and maximizing the free cooling period.”
As part of the Met Office’s overhaul of its high-performance computing systems in the next 18 months, the agency also plans to use direct current (DC) instead of alternating current (AC) in its servers to “avoid the large losses of power during conversion from AC to DC,” according to eWeek. It quotes Met Office IT chief Steve Foreman as saying:
“We take the power off the mains, put it through the UPS so it is goes to DC, convert it back to AC,step it up, step it down, move it around a bit, and then we take it down into the machines for the current required … We are asking suppliers if there is any way we can reduce all that power loss so that we can just take DC out of the UPS [Uninterruptible Power Supply] and straight into the machines. We reckon we could save about 5% of our power use just by doing that and taking out those losses.”