Remote temperature monitoring as well as monitoring humidity levels or water leaks is part of the bread and butter of our complete environmental monitoring solution. Our green appliances consume the least amounts of electricity and provide the widest breadth of commercial sensors available on the market.  Most solutions require some type of customization and often a bit of consultation to guide the customer through the selection process.

Our growth has been fueled by customer satisfaction and the solid reputation we have earned on the reliability of our products.  Our team takes great pride in providing a highly reliable product to its customers.  We understand that our equipment is used to monitor equipment failure and prevent downtime of critical systems.  It is no surprise that one of our goals is to deliver equipment that is reliable enough to take up this task.

It is clear to us that the computer room or server room in any business is a critical part of the business infrastructure and as such, you need to be secure in the knowledge that it always remains operational. It is vital that all your sensitive equipment is monitored and controlled.

Pick up the phone and reach out to us if you need some ideas on how to monitor something even if it’s something simple like a water leak alarm.  We can help.

All of our appliances support SNMP empowering network administrators to trend humidity and temperature levels over time.  My favorite tools is Denika performance trender.

Server Room Monitoring: Climate Control
Some data room temperature experts feel that after hours the climate control should go into “standby” and let the server room monitoring  temperature rise to what some feel are un-healthy levels. By the time employees return to work, the climate control has already switched to “Active” and nobody knows the server room was 100 degrees at midnight.

What do you think, is this a good server room monitoring strategy?

Here are 5 Reasons to Monitor Server Room Temperatures:

1. Protect equipment from failure and data loss
2. Environmental threats are heightened after hours
3. Rack Temperatures matter more than office temp
4. Make sure your air distribution is working correctly
5. Lower cooling expenses without lowering reliability

Using a temperature sensor for computer room temperature monitoring provides companies with piece of mind knowing that they will be notified if temperature rises above a threshold.  It also allows companies trying to implement Green IT or Green Computing to get a better idea on how well their conservation efforts are doing.

Unlike humidity monitoring To optimize temperature monitoring and gain a better overall perception of ambient temperature, a temperature sensor should be placed in each enclosed server rack.

Most data rooms are kept between 68-72.  Did you know that data center managers could save 4 percent in energy costs for every degree of upward change in the set point? This is according to Mark Monroe of Sun Microsystems.

Data Room Airflow
The data center airflow had also better be kept in check.  Many IT centers have air conditioners for the data rooms but, what about the cabinet temperature of each rack?

A single humidity sensor can provide decent ambient temperature for the entire room.  The same is not true for temperature and especially not airflow. Placing a temperature and air flow sensor in each computer cabinet will help ensure proper data cabinet ventilation.

With proper airflow design, air moves evenly through the data center.  If you are using our data room security solution, you can consider adding a few cameras as well.

If you have questions or would like a demonstration, contact our data room and environmental monitoring  specialists.

Cold temperatures means freezing temperatures and with that usually comes snow which is needed for one of my favorite winter activities: snowmobiling!

I picked up my iPhone and checked out how the office was doing.

Isn’t technology today with smart phones amazing.  Above you can see our cameras, zoom in, check the humidity sensors, water detectors, outstanding alarms and more all with one thumb.

We of course setup the above system to give customer demonstrations.  Call us to check out our security monitoring solution.

Server Room Monitoring

If you have a need to monitor the environment of your server room, our server room environmental monitoring solution could be the solution you have been looking for. See the screen capture below.  We can also add web cameras.

Reach out to our team if you would like a demonstration
of our data room temperature, humidity, smoke, camera, motion, etc. monitoring solution.

I also learned that the LUX rating is extremely important when choosing a night vision camera.  The lower to zero the better. In other words, .001 is extremely good night vision. Configuration of the security dashboard is also important.  I was able to setup a security map which listed where I had placed our temperature monitors, humidity monitors, security cameras, water sensors, air flow sensors, smoke, dry contact and DC voltage sensors.  I got it all setup before I finished my morning coffee.

Believe it or not, dry contact sensors are popular especially in data room temperature monitoring.  The techs love the Security web interface.

If you want to learn more about the process I went through to set up our security monitoring system, give us a call.

• sudo apt-get install libpcap-dev
• sudo apt-get install softflowd

After softflowd is installed you can run it on an interface. In the example below eth0 is attached to a mirrored port (uplink) on a core switch and the NetFlow is being sent to 10.1.10.1 on UDP 2055. This will allow you to see all of the flows on the switch.

• sudo softflowd –v 9 –n10.1.10.1:2055 –i eth0 –m 100000 –t general=60s

Use a free NetFlow monitoring tool such as Scrutinizer.  Scrutinizer NetFlow Analyzer will treat this as a new exporter, but will only report using a single interface, 0. All of the flows are tagged with a source interface of 0 and a destination interface of 0.

What is the ambient temperature?  This is a tricky question that when answered correctly involves several answers!

Different things can impact the ideal ambient temperature.  Who or what is inside the room that could be impacting temperature (people, an oven, a light, etc.). The seals around windows, the temperature outside and other influencers such as air flow can all be a factor when trying to determining ambient temperature. If you are painting a car, the ideal temperature depends on the type of paint and on the material being painted.

The ideal temperature obviously depends on the individual or on the application involved. For most, 22 °C (71.6 °F) is the recommended living room temperature, and 18 °C (64.4 °F) is a good bedroom temperature.

Don’t forget about humidity detection.  Although moisture in the room can help make it feel warmer, it generally does not impact the ambient temperature. If it is, we have humidity sensors for humidity monitoring!

The Map Tab on the software will allow you to upload your own image file as the background. We took a screen capture of our office from Google maps and used it as our map image. First, click the button to the left that says ‘Add New Map‘. Next, choose your photo to upload and give it a name on the interface.

Next, you can select if you want to set it as a parent map or a primary map. After clicking next again, you will be taken to a screen where you will be walked through unlocking the map. After unlocking it you will be able to drag and drop your icons for each sensor to anywhere on the image.

Keep in mind these icons are configurable. Once you lock the map you can click each icon and select the ‘icon Settings‘ and change the icons for each sensor.

Now, you can go ahead and add the map option to the Summary Tab and see it displayed on the main page.

If you look at your layout settings you can select the ‘Map” option and click Save Layout. Now the map will be displayed on the main summary tab along with other video surveillance devices.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.