Environmental Monitoring During the Winter Months
Filed under: General, environmental monitoring, water leak monitoring
Today, we had our first major snow storm of the season. I’m a transplant to the northeast and winter in
Maine is still a jarring experience for me. My hometown of Vancouver, WA basically shuts down at the first sight of snow and doesn’t reopen until all the white stuff has melted away, which in a normal year is sometime before 4 pm on the same day. Around here, you just prepare, plow through and get on with business.
Winter requires some special preparation for the inside of your facility as well. With snow and ice comes the threat of water pipes bursting and power outages. Make sure that your facility is protected by having a back-up generator in place. You should also be sure that the main water pipes and any pipes that are running along uninsulated walls have been winterized. Read more
~JessicaFollow Me on Twitter
Avoiding water damage during floods
Filed under: environmental monitoring, water leak monitoring
This past weekend, the remnants of tropical storm Ida showed up in Southern Maine as a rain-soaked nor’easter. Fortunately, for us, we didn’t see the wide spread flooding and coastal erosion that other areas experienced further south on the New Jersey and Delaware coasts. 
Seeing all the news footage of flooded streets made me think about how important it is to be prepared for water infiltration due to flooding. According to the Red Cross, floods are among the most frequent and costly natural disasters, causing more than 90% of the damage related to natural disasters. On average, floods cause more than $4 billion in damages worldwide, per year. Proper preparation is equally important for businesses and homeowners.
Complete Environment Monitoring
Filed under: Intelligent Sensors, SensorProbes, airflow monitoring, environmental monitoring, motion detector, water leak monitoring
A soup to nuts environmental monitoring solution includes more than just temperature readings, humidity monitoring and smoke detection. If electronic equipment is in the area, it is often a good idea to monitor for other environmental conditions:
- Monitoring for water leaks
- Voltage monitoring for electrical brownouts or complete electrical loss
- Motion detection and automated photo delivery
- Airflow monitoring
Water leak detection systems in the server room
Filed under: environmental monitoring, water leak monitoring
With the importance placed on temperature and humidity monitoring and detecting hotspots in the data center, it is easy to forget that the second most common cause of catastrophic failure are water leaks. Whether your server room is located near refrigeration equipment used for building cooling, building facilities like bathrooms and kitchens or air conditioning units, precautions need to be taken.
Prevention
It all starts at the building planning level. Having an initial survey, to know if your building is in or near a flood zone, sounds like a no brainer, but it’s surprising how many people I speak with on a weekly basis that are in the heart of a flood zone with no water monitoring system in place. Once you know the situation your server room is in, it is important to take the necessary precautions by having the proper drainage installed, including a sump pump. This protects you in the event flooding becomes present.
Data center in hot water
Filed under: environmental monitoring, temperature monitoring, water leak monitoring
So here I was, thinking about what today’s blog would be, and my buddy Mitch gave me today’s title. Although a corny title, it describes an issue that happened with a customer of mine. The good news is that Ravica’s probes helped save the day.
Joe, the Admin for an ISP, had purchased multiple water sensors and temperature sensors for his six data rooms. Around 3:20am on a Sunday he got an alert from his SensorProbe. Apparently, the temp in one of the server rooms was rising. Since he was on call, he decided to get into his truck and see what was going on. On his way to the building, he received another page. The water sensor had triggered. He was now very concerned.
Once he reached the data center, it was obvious to him what had happened. One of the valves of the heating system started to reached its limit. This quickly caused the temp of the pipes to rise, which is what triggered the temperature sensor.
The relief vales reached their breaking point and started to spray water all over the first data room. He was quick to let me know that he shut down the water and saved the other data rooms from being soaked, since they were in line and showed signs of having the same behavior.
That means the investment in the temperature monitoring probes saved them thousands of dollars. If that isn’t the best reason to buy then I don’t know one that is!
- Jimmy D
Ravica Sensor Probes help at the WaterPark
A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog about how I helped a local amusement park solve an overheating problem with Ravica’s sensor probes. Luckily, I schedule follow up calls to make sure that everything is working as planned. I found out that they have another issue that I can help with.
This amusement park has an attached water park with 20 plus rides. The water for all of these rides is supplied from three pumping stations. Each pumping station has a small data center. The pump section of each of these units has all the emergency equipment that you could ask for, but the data center lacked.
A few weeks ago, they had one of their sump pumps fail. The water backed up quite a bit and flooded the floor of the data closet. The good news is that they only had to replace a few of the items that were near the floor, but it was clear that they needed a solution.
I suggested that they get the BitSight2 and use the water sensors along with the AC voltage detector. The water sensor would detect if any water is getting near the door. It would then alert if the water starts to build up near the door. We then would use the AC Voltage Detector to monitor the power coming from the sump pump. Now we can detect if the pump kicks in and turns off. If water is getting to a certain point and the pump is not on, you need to check the situation.
The BitSight2 can store all this information for historical reporting. Now they can generate reports on how many times the sump pumps had to kick in and how many times the water level reached the marked point.
The customer placed the order today and we are going to implement the solution next month. I can’t wait to see it in action.
- JimmyD
Water leak monitoring helps avoid mold
Filed under: Intelligent Sensors, environmental monitoring, humidity monitoring, water leak monitoring
Water leaks and or high humidity can lead to mildew and mold. The results after prolonged exposure can mean premature paint problems, structural issues and health problems, not to mention the stink!
We can’t depend on our noses to do your mildew monitoring because we can’t be in a dozen places at once all the time.
There is an easier way. Our water sensor can monitor for water leaks. The cable for the actual sensor can be up to 100 feet away from the BitSight. Because its unique design, it can be used to notify when water levels drop too low as well.
The humidity sensors we manufacture can be run 1,000 feet and fished through walls to measure humidity in air ducts, crawl spaces, etc. As a bonus, the same unit performs temperature monitoring and measure as well.
Ravica has a complete line of intelligent environmental monitoring solutions to help protect your business from a environmental disaster. All units support SNMP and send alerts in numerous formats.
- Mike
5 tips to protect your data center hardware
Filed under: Data Center, environmental monitoring, humidity monitoring, power monitoring, temperature monitoring, water leak monitoring
I work with network administrators everyday and I hear one common story. They are not buying servers. The IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker supports me on this. Server vendors are reporting that their business is off 24.5 percent from last year, falling to $9.9 billion in the first quarter of 2009.
They don’t have the budget or can’t get the budget to update their aging equipment. So, what can these admins do to extend the life of their equipment?
Just like an older automobile, maintenance and proper care of the equipment can easily extend your equipment’s life. Constant monitoring of your system inside and out can save you from loosing mission critical servers. Environmental monitors like the temperature and humidity, airflow, smoke and water sensors can be used to make sure that the environment that your systems operate in are the best they can be.
Now, I know what you are saying, “Jim’s just a salesman and wants you to buy something.” Although I might get excited about a product and preach its goodness, I am not a sales person . I might dream of being the star of a Shamtastic infomercial, but trust me, I’m not. What I do want you to know, is that there are some simple things that you can to to help save your hardware.
- Your server room is not a storage area! If it is, it really shouldn’t be. Extra stuff in the room can cause heat issues and possibly be a fire hazard. Keep the area clean and free of obstacles.
- Manage your cables properly. I had a boss who had a hang up on making sure the all cables were organized correctly. You guessed it, I didn’t think it was all that important. In hindsight, I was wrong. Keeping them organized is great for physical management, but more importantly, it makes it easier to manage airflow. Be it a cable tunnel or just pulling them together with a zip tie, making sure your servers get the correct ventilation is important.
- Have a physical maintenance window for your machines. It might bring you back to youthful A+ days, but making sure the servers are dust free and cables are in the correct place can help immensely.
- Monitor the servers health with an SNMP Trending app. Most servers can give you CPU, Server Temp, Fan Info and other valuable information, via a simple SNMP walk. A SNMP trending application, like Denika, will allow you to gather historical information on this data and alert on it.
- Monitor your environment. As I mentioned before, monitoring the room temp, humidity and airflow will make your admin life a lot easier. If you have some room in your budget, this might be the best way to spend it.
So there it is. I guess the old saying, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” is correct. Even in today’s super digital world!
- Jimmy D
SNMP support for the SecurityProbe allows secure data center monitoring
Filed under: Data Center, Intelligent Sensors, Security Monitoring, environmental monitoring, power monitoring, smoke detector, temperature monitoring, water leak monitoring
In 2004, the IETF officially recognized SNMP v3, as defined by RFC 3411–RFC 3418, as the current standard version of the Simple Network Management Protocol. SNMP v2, although being a highly competent and widely used protocol, was severly lacking in the areas of security and remote configuration. Thus, SNMP v3 was born.
SNMP v3 added some much needed security features, like ensuring message integrity, verifying that the message came from a valid source with authentication, and packet encryption to ensure that messages aren’t being disseminated by unauthorized sources.
Because of its enhanced security features, SNMP v3 quickly found itself a requirement for many government and secure corporate projects. Since 2004, SNMP v3 has found itself a home in most networks with any sort of security requirements.
That is why the Ravica SecurityProbe line of SensorProbes supports SNMP v3. From within the Settings tab, simply select SNMP under the Connectivity header to the left. You will see the screen below.
From here you can select the type of security features required:
- No Authentication
- Authentication Only
- Authentication & Encryption
Enter your desired password, choose your authentication protocol and access privilege, then it’s off to the races. Now all of your SNMP information will be sent/polled from the SecurityProbe in version 3.
This is a highly popular feature amoung SecurityProbe users. Hopefully, if you didn’t already know it was there, you will find it valuable to impliment in your network. It is now as easy as ever to keep your physical data room details secure.
~ Jon Mills
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The future of data center design
Filed under: Data Center, environmental monitoring, humidity monitoring, temperature monitoring, water leak monitoring
I just read that the NSA is going to build a 20 acre data center in Utah. This one million square foot center will allow the NSA to decentralize its efforts and provide better security. Just imagine the amount of power it will take to operate a data center of this size? This Slashdot article points out that one of the biggest reasons why the 
government is building this compound is due to its power consumption and the current location’s inability to provide the needed electricity. The government estimates that it will use at least 65 megawatts of power or about the same amount that Salt Lake City consumes.
“The agency got a taste of the potential for trouble January 24, 2000, when an information overload, rather than a power shortage, caused the NSA’s first-ever network crash, taking the agency 3 1/2 days to resume operations. The new data center in Utah will require at least 65 megawatts of power” - Salt Lake Tribune
Another cool data center design is the one that Google is planning to build. The entire center will be built on a floating barge, and will use the waves of the ocean to help power the facility. It will also use ocean water to cool the equipment.
Last, but not least, is the underground data center in Sweden. This has to be the coolest data center ever! It is located underground, can withstand a hydrogen attack, has a waterfall and a greenhouse. It can generate its own power, and is equipped with triple redundancy Internet backbone access.
I wonder, what type of environmental monitoring sensors do they have? What type of redundancy and fail-safes? Designing a data center like these is a monumental task. I can’t wait to see what the future holds for Data Center Design.
- Jimmy D