Is an environmentally sustainable data center possible?
One of the biggest concerns for IT facility managers is monitoring the temperature in data centers and server rooms to make sure that the excessive heat produced by hardware is not accumulating to dangerous levels that can overheat the servers. This is an important task for the obvious reason that overheated equipment can lead to expensive hardware damage and loss of data. However, conventional HVAC systems that use chilled forced air to cool data centers are highly inefficient with regards to energy consumption and therefore indirectly effect CO2 emissions. Being a bit of a green building geek, I looked up some examples of data centers that are using new (and old) technology for lower impact cooling. Read more
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Setting up voice/SMS notifications with Skype
One of the great things about a web-based environmental monitoring system is the ability to set-up notifications in a wide variety of ways to make sure that emergency situations do not go un-noticed. This saves on the response time that can easily be the difference between averting a disaster and having to face substantial losses of data or property. The SecurityProbe’s user friendly web-interface provides a number of options for setting up notifications for every sensor available in the Ravica line. One of the newest features is the ability to set up voice and SMS text notifications using Skype.
~Jessica
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SNMP Temperature Monitoring
Filed under: Data Center, SensorProbes, airflow monitoring, environmental monitoring, temperature monitoring
Whenever we buy anything for the company, I always ask if it can be connected to the network and monitored with SNMP. For example, when a new HVAC system was installed in our building, I asked if it was going to be SNMP manageable. The contractor looked at me like I was speaking Greek. Out of curiosity, I decided to search on the idea and found this company called Chipkin that makes an SNMP gateway, as does the s4group.
Why do I care about SNMP?
I care about SNMP because I want to manage everything from a central location. We use MyView in Scrutinizer. From a central location, we can monitor the network, the call center and, if we wanted to, the coffee pot.
BTW: Fugoo is considering a marketing plan for their network connected coffee maker, however, it lacks support for SNMP and the Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol.
Temperature and humidity monitoring for agribusiness
Filed under: environmental monitoring, humidity monitoring, temperature monitoring
When you hear words like farm, agriculture, and greenhouse; you are much more likely to visualize pastoral scenes of rolling hills and grazing livestock than images of computers and network cables. In fact, we often think of farms and greenhouses as the antithesis of the high-tech environment. In reality, the modern commercial farm utilizes many different technologies to assist in farm management. One of the ways that technology and networking can make a farmer’s life much easier is in environmental monitoring. Read more
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