Summertime Data Room Monitoring: Part 2
Filed under: airflow monitoring, Data Center, environmental monitoring
In part one I went over the advantages of Temperature, Humidity, and Water leak monitoring. In this continuation of the saga will continue to focus on more ways to prevent the summer weather from damaging your data center while staying proactive in your defense. Read more
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Monitor Airflow Around Critical Equipment
The Ravica Airflow Sensor is designed for systems that generate heat in the course of their operation and a steady flow of air is necessary to dissipate this generated heat. System reliability and safety could be jeopardized if this cooling airflow stops. Airflow Sensors monitor the circulation of air around critical equipment where a constant air-flow is required to maintain a consistent temperature and humidity status and reliable continual performance.
The Airflow Sensor is placed in the air stream path, allowing users to monitor the status of the flowing air. This device measures the presence or absence of air flow, then the sensorProbe environmental monitor displays the measurement using a graphical display via its web interface. Read more
Server Room Environment Moderated by Mother Nature
Filed under: airflow monitoring, Data Center, environmental monitoring, humidity monitoring, temperature monitoring
Recently, I saw a interesting post on Life Hacker about how to moderate PC temperature. It reminded me of a blog that I wrote a while back that talked about recycling expelled heat from the server room and using it to heat the office. The Life Hacker blog post demonstrated a method of cooling an over-clocked PC with fresh air from outside.
Although I think there are a few engineering flaws in the post, the design and concept are stable.
Using natural resources to cool your server room is clearly the next logical step in making server rooms green. Read more
Are you optimizing your environmental monitoring system?
Filed under: environmental monitoring, Intelligent Sensors
Here on the Ravica Blog, we talk a lot about temperature and humidity monitoring in data centers, but did you know 
that you can use the same Sensor Probes to create a centralized monitoring system that can provide information on almost any environmental condition? The following is a run-down of some of the other Ravica intelligent sensors that are available. All the sensors are plug & play, SNMP-enabled and easily integrated into the environmental monitoring system of your dreams. Read more
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Complete Environment Monitoring
Filed under: airflow monitoring, environmental monitoring, Intelligent Sensors, motion detector, SensorProbes, 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
How to monitor data room temperature
Data room temperature monitoring can can involve more than just hanging a thermometer on the wall. Measurements should be taken from at least two locations
Isn’t as simple as a thermometer. There a little issue called airflow monitoring that needs to be in places as well. If you already own a BitSight or SensorProbe, you probably have a spare port.
Why not add another temperature sensor for across the room or an airflow sensor so that you have a more ambient environmental monitoring solution for very little money?
- Mike
The future of airconditioning and how the rest of the world can monitor temperature
I just found an entry on Slashdot about a deal between IBM & Carrier to create and market a web enabled air conditioner. Apparently you are able to gain complete control of the unit via the simple web interface. Being a geek, this intrigued me. What about everyone else who cannot obtain one of these units?
Being able to log in and monitor the environment is something you can do with the Ravica line of SensorProbes. I would suggest getting one of the temperature and humidity probes to start with. From my research, high humidity plays a big role in the cost and operation of your air conditioning units. Being able to trend and be alerted during these times can be beneficial.
Next, I would use the airflow probe to tell me when the unit is on. I know, it is an odd way to detect the air conditioners state, but trust me, it’s logical. You can use an airflow sensor on any type of unit. Like the one in the above picture or built-in industrial type. With an airflow sensor, you are not limited to testing current flow or temperature.
Last, but not least, I would use the Sensor Controlled Relay to be able to turn off the unit, if you needed to, in an emergency situation.
So the good news is that you can implement Ravica’s environmental probes in various ways to help monitor your environment. What’s even better is that this technology is available to every one.
- JimmyD
The importance of monitoring airflow in the office
In a previous blog, Mike mentioned the importance of monitoring the airflow in your data center, but recently we were reminded of just how important airflow is in the work environment. Normally, our office is quite chilly. However, yesterday, the employees of Ravica were treated to nice a nice toasty office to work in. It was certainly a welcome change.
The reason for our cubicles being so nice and warm was because the air conditioning (which is normally blasting non-stop) was not turning on. After several hours, the nice toasty office become a stagnant bog of stale air. Breathing nothing but other people’s CO2 was getting my coworkers and I very sluggish and lethargic – not to mention hot and sweaty.
Luckily, we had a couple of airflow sensors placed in front of the air conditioning vents. As I mentioned, the air conditioning in our work area is typically blowing all day, and quite hard, so to have it shut off for a while and let the office temperature rise a bit, is actually a good thing. However, we can now see that if it does not start back up in a reasonable time frame, things can go too far in the other direction.
To alleviate the issue of getting email alerts from the airflow sensor every time the air conditioning unit shut off, we tweaked the “Continuous time to report” field, under that sensor’s setup screen. Now we can occasionally get a reprieve from our normally frigid conditions, but if the air conditioner stays off for more than a couple of hours, the building manager and our office manager get an email alert. Of course, since we have the airflow sensor connected to a SecurityProbe, we can use escalated notifications. So if for any reason the building manager does not acknowledge the alert within an hour, then he gets a text message sent directly to his phone.
So it is certainly important to keep your expensive data room equipment from overheating, but it is just as important to keep your employees from overheating as well.
~ Jon Mills
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Ravica’s Sensor Controlled Relay – The Rosetta Stone?
Filed under: airflow monitoring, Data Center, environmental monitoring
A few weeks ago I talked about using the sensor controlled relay to turn on lights once an alarm had been triggered. In this blog I wanted to give another example of how versatile these units can be.
Solutions . . .
A great example is the solution that I found for a local amusement park. One of their outdoor venues was having an 
issue with their digital photography equipment overheating. It wasn’t economical to add air condition to the unit, so they needed to find a way to turn on multiple overhead fans automatically.
The management of this unit fell under the IT department, and the admin wanted to remotely monitor the data from his office (or any other portable device). The end solution was to monitor multiple environmental variables with the Ravica Sensor Probe and use the Sensor Controlled Relay to switch on the fan when the room temperature rises beyond the threshold level.
Since the sensor control unit has a user friendly web interface and an autosense feature, setting up the Sensor Controlled Relay is easy. The Sensor Controlled Relay can also be controlled via external computers, using the included SNMP command line utilities either interactively or programmatically.
From the unit itself, you can monitor the status of the Sensor Controlled Relay by four LEDs on the board. You can also monitor the unit remotely by using SNMP traps or the web interface, as well as e-mail and SMS alerts.
Implementation . . .
“The Sensor Controlled Relay provides 1 high-power SPDT 5V relay, with the maximum load up to 15A at 220 VAC. It includes Metal Oxide Varistors (MOVs) and Snubber circuits to protect the open contacts of the relays from high voltage spikes or noise transients. It monitors the power and load, and accepts a control signal, which is sent from the SensorProbe.”
We outsourced a local contractor to do the electrical work and the end result was better then we expected. Not only did we eliminate the equipment from overheating, but we are also able to trend the temp of the units over a given amount of time. This gave the admin a better picture of demand and heat generation.
Another thing to remember is the inlaid protection of this sensor. The Sensor Controlled Relay, it has a built in 16Amp circuit breaker and a 15Amp fuse (380 VAC, 125 VDC) giving it double protection for the external devices and possible damages by electrical fault. This assures protection for your sensor and your investment.
Conclusion . . .
As you can see, the Ravica Sensor Controlled Relay has many uses. It’s ability to control an array of analog devices makes it a versatile solution. It’s ability to monitor and protect itself make it a smart investment. That is why I recommend it every chance that I get.
- JimmyD
Airflow in data centers requires careful monitoring
Monitoring the temperature of a room from a single location sometimes does not provide a good overall representation of the ambient environmental conditions. I asked around and found out about Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). CFD can provide 3-D analysis of how air is moving through a data center and identify potential warm areas where equipment is likely suffering from too little airflow.
I think it would be cool if our solution could provide a diagram as shown below:
I found the above image from a company called inres.com. They make a product called TileFlow. TileFlow is a powerful three-dimensional software tool for simulating cooling performance of data centers. It uses the state-of-the-art computational fluid dynamics (CFD) techniques, and is applicable to both raised-floor and non-raised-floor data centers.
If you don’t have unlimited resources, you could use our gear to create a map that looks like this:
The above is web based and the LEDs representing temperature, humidity and airflow change color based on thresholds. Notifications can be sent, and visual trends are provided, as well. It is a low cost solution, starting at $325.00 for temperature and humidity monitoring, and an airflow sensor can be added for another $125.00. That is tough to beat.
Contact us for a live demonstration of this capability.
- Mike