Data Room Temperature and Data Room Security
Google says that when it comes to data room temperature we can raise the temperature to 80 degrees!
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.
SNMP Temperature Monitoring
Filed under: airflow monitoring, Data Center, environmental monitoring, SensorProbes, 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.
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 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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