Ravica adds NetFlow probes to product line-up
This month, Ravica branched out from our environmental monitoring roots and added a new product line of NetFlow probes to our inventory. These include two hardware options, the nBox and the nTap, as well as a software NetFlow solution, the nProbe. For today’s blog, I’ll focus in on the nBox.
NetFlow is a network protocol that was developed by Cisco Systems to collect IP traffic information and it has become the standard in network traffic monitoring by IT professionals. For more information on NetFlow, check out this blog on NetFlow basics at Systrax.com. For those without NetFlow capable routers or switches, fully utilizing NetFlow requires a probe which is generally attached to a PC and a software tool to capture the network information and put it into a usable form.
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Using maps to keep an eye on your sensors
Filed under: environmental monitoring, General, Intelligent Sensors
I’ve wrote a lot lately about the expandability of the SecurityProbe line of products and getting the most out of your environmental monitoring system, but with the idea of virtually unlimited expandability comes the problem of keeping track of the hundreds of dry contacts and sensors that are integrated into your monitoring system. When you get a critical alert on temperature sensor 018, do you know where that is located? This can be a be an especially big problem for larger facilities, like college campuses, where the sensors are gathering information from multiple buildings spread out over a large area. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to see at a quick glance where individual sensors are located and if there is a problem. That is exactly what the mapping feature on the SecurityProbe is designed to do. Read more
~JessicaFollow Me on Twitter
Raising the Temperature Bar
On the heels of the Earth Hour campaign that occurred this past Sunday, I’d like to give a shout out to the Green IT website. The website was launched last week and is in preparation for International Green IT Awareness Week, scheduled for June 1-7. Check out the site for some great tips for making data centers, and IT in general, more energy efficient. Almost all of the 100 ideas will end up saving a company some money, some require an initial investment in more efficient equipment, but some are just simple changes in behavior and require little more than a shift in thinking to make a sizable dent in energy costs. Read more
~JessicaFollow Me on Twitter
The benefits of a Ravica smoke detector
Filed under: environmental monitoring, General, SensorProbes, smoke detector
Everyone knows how important it is to keep facility smoke detectors in good working order. Smoke
detectors are a vital part of the life/safety plan in all residential and commercial buildings. In many situations a standard, battery-operated smoke detector is all you need. It’s reliable, it’s loud, and it gets the job done. However, in some situations the stand alone alarm might not be enough. If the smoke detector is located in an area that is not regularly occupied, like a storage warehouse, there might not be anyone around to hear that loud alarm. Or, what if the emergency occurs after business hours? It is the proverbial tree falling in the forest, but in the case of a fire, the damage will ring loud and clear, even if no one was around to hear the initial alarm. For these kinds of situations, a smoke alarm that ties into a web-based environmental monitoring system is a smart idea.
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Virtually unlimited expandability for the SecurityProbe . . . connect up to 600 sensors to one unit!
Filed under: environmental monitoring, General, Ravica News, SensorProbes
The majority of Ravica customers that I talk with are looking to monitor a small number of specific environmental conditions—sometimes that is monitoring the temperature and humidity in the data center or detecting water leaks in a second home. For these applications, the BitSight2 and BitSight8 sensor probe models are great environmental monitoring solutions at an affordable price. However, there are times when a customer has a need to monitor many, many more conditions and input devices. For these customers, I’d like to cover the expandability features of the newest SecurityProbe model.
In the past, some of the SecurityProbe advantages included; advanced notification options, great video capabilities and the ability to connect up to 8 sensor probes per unit. The newest SecurityProbe retains all of these great features and adds four RJ-45 expansion ports to the front of the box which allows the connection of up to four expansion units. There are two expansion units options available: the E-opto16 and the E-sensor8.
With the E-opto16, you get 16 isolated dry contact inputs. A typical application for this expansion module would be to connect the dry contact to alarm panels and create custom alerts for each of the alarms. For example, one could have a dry contact connected to the fire alarm, another to the security alarm, and another to the AED cabinet. Each dry contact could then be set up to automatically call the respective emergency operator, in these cases the fire department, police, or paramedics. An unlimited number of E-opto16’s can be daisy-chained to accommodate up to 600 different dry contact inputs.
If you are more interested in increasing the number of intelligent sensors that can be monitored, there is the E-sensor8 that adds 8 sensor ports. Like the E-opto16, the E-sensor8 can be daisy-chained to allow the monitoring of up to 600 sensors through a single SecurityProbe. The two expansion units are also compatible with each other , giving the user complete control in designing the combination of dry contacts and sensors that works for their unique needs.
If you’d like more information on these new expansion modules, give us a call at 207.324.8173. We’d love to help you design an environmental monitoring system that does just what you need it to do.
~JessicaFollow Me on Twitter
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
~JessicaFollow Me on Twitter
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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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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Security solutions for car dealership lots
Continuing on my recent security kick—it is an unfortunate side effect of being both a news junkie and obsessed with TV detective shows—today, I dive headlong into the problem of securing dealership lots. This problem came to my attention as I was researching motion detectors for last week’s post on data center security.
Most car dealerships have the unique problem of needing to store very expensive inventory in outdoor lots, therefore theft and vandalism are major security concerns. Some larger dealerships can contract outside security firms to remotely monitor their lots, but what about small, local dealerships? With new car dealerships all over the country being hit hard by the financial problems of the major car makers, an affordable security option that can be monitored successfully by existing dealership staff is in order. Read more
~JessicaFollow Me on Twitter
Physical Security for Data Centers
Data centers house some of the most valuable and irreplaceable assets for any organization. For this reason, physical security is of the utmost importance when designing a data center. Depending on the size and budget of the organization, physical security measures can include everything from solid floor-to-deck concrete partitions to biometrics screening.
There should also be a number of sensors in place that can detect when anyone, authorized or unauthorized, accesses the data center. The following 5 tips show how Ravica can offer effective solutions for that final line of defense. Read more
~JessicaFollow Me on Twitter