Ravica Blog » Data Center http://www.ravica.com/blog Environmental monitoring solutions that just work Mon, 30 Jan 2012 10:26:32 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Server Room Environment Moderated by Mother Nature http://www.ravica.com/blog/data-center/sever-room-environment-moderated-by-mother-nature/ http://www.ravica.com/blog/data-center/sever-room-environment-moderated-by-mother-nature/#comments Mon, 17 Jan 2011 13:39:12 +0000 JimmyD http://www.ravica.com/blog/?p=1838 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.

Efficient Server Room

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.

Now, I am not suggesting that you go and implement this type of hack in your company’s server room.  At the very least, this action would get you demoted and sent to the basement where you could display your very own red stapler.  At the worst, you could find your self celebrating the beginning of 2011 looking for new career opportunities.

What you should take from this in the near future is that the design and implementation of server rooms heating and cooling system will be using natural resources like the cold air from outside.  What will make this achievable and- more importantly- practical is the ability to monitor and react to environmental changes.  That is where the technology used in today’s temperature probes will shine.

So, until the future comes, I suggest using your very own Ravica environmental sensor probes to monitor the temperature and humidity in your server room, and to follow these five steps to protect hardware in your data center.

- Jimmy D

]]> http://www.ravica.com/blog/data-center/sever-room-environment-moderated-by-mother-nature/feed/ 0 Temperature and Humidity Monitor Demo from Ravica http://www.ravica.com/blog/sensorprobes/temperature-and-humidity-monitor-demo-from-ravica/ http://www.ravica.com/blog/sensorprobes/temperature-and-humidity-monitor-demo-from-ravica/#comments Tue, 30 Nov 2010 15:54:49 +0000 Angela http://www.ravica.com/blog/?p=1594 You’ve heard about temperature and environmental monitoring, and you understand its value.  But have you seen one in action?BitSight2 Environmental Monitoring Sensor

Check out our online demo to see some features of the BitSight2 environmental monitoring system.  See the parameters we have selected for use in our own data room.  These parameters are easily customizable to accommodate your specific environmental needs.

This sensor probe works with every intelligent sensor in the Ravica family.  You can connect any of our sensors in any combination to monitor temperature, humidity, water leakage, and airflow including long term graphing, security, detect AC Power Line Voltage, Measure Digital Voltmeter, control relays, and many more.  Our sensors include an integrated data collection and graphing package to spot trends in the airflow, temperature, and humidity.

Dry contacts and drivers are available for monitoring UPS status, security systems, and air conditioning status.

Every sensor comes with our unique autosense feature. Whenever a new type of sensor is plugged in, the autosense will recognize it and reconfigure the BS2 to begin monitoring it. In the event of an alarm or temperature / humidity threshold being exceeded, it has the ability to send alert notifications using Email, SMS (via an email-to-SMS gateway) and SNMP Traps.

From anywhere in the world, you can view your data center’s status via the web interface.  Also, view your data center with the integrated security cameras.

You can map the location of the probes in your data center or facility.  You can integrate this map into your own management applications.

The Ravica line of environmental sensors and products is versatile and reliable.  Feel free to play with the online demo to see some of the available features.  If you have further questions, give us a call any time.

~Angela
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]]> http://www.ravica.com/blog/sensorprobes/temperature-and-humidity-monitor-demo-from-ravica/feed/ 0 Data Center Monitoring to Save You Time http://www.ravica.com/blog/sensorprobes/data-center-monitoring-to-save-you-time/ http://www.ravica.com/blog/sensorprobes/data-center-monitoring-to-save-you-time/#comments Mon, 01 Nov 2010 17:05:15 +0000 Angela http://www.ravica.com/blog/?p=1472 If you work in the IT field, chances are that you’re constantly busy putting out figurative fires, but you also know the importance of protecting your company’s network infrastructure and data center.  Regardless of the size of your business, there aren’t enough hours in the day to continually monitor your data center. 

Assign those tasks to Ravica’s SensorProbe so you can focus on other facets of your job, like playing with your new email reporting software, Mailinizer Email Log Analyzer from Plixer International. 

While you’re running Mailinizer reports to determine your top email users, Ravica’s environmental monitoring solutions can monitor your data center for humidity, temperature, voltage surges, water leaks, smoke, and security so you don’t have to.  The sensors aren’t just fancy smoke detectors.  They are versatile and reliable devices that can prevent total damage by sending instant alerts about potential threats.  They are designed to keep you in control.  They can be placed virtually any location that you want to protect from environmental hazards.

So while you’re busy saving the IT world by putting out figurative fires, our sensors will notify you of any potential real fires or other hazards. 

Set your notification parameters, then elect to receive notifications in a variety of ways including an audible alarm, Skype, email, a strobe light, text messages, Twitter, and on the web-based interface.  Be instantly notified of potential problems. 

Need more hours in the day?  Then set your data center monitoring thresholds, and let our sensors do the work for you.

~Angela
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]]> http://www.ravica.com/blog/sensorprobes/data-center-monitoring-to-save-you-time/feed/ 0 Avoid Damage Caused by Data Center Humidity http://www.ravica.com/blog/data-center/avoid-damage-caused-by-data-center-humidity/ http://www.ravica.com/blog/data-center/avoid-damage-caused-by-data-center-humidity/#comments Tue, 28 Sep 2010 14:28:41 +0000 Angela http://www.ravica.com/blog/?p=1334 Agricultural experts in my hometown regularly uttered the phrase, “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.”  In the data center environment, humidity can be an overlooked hazard.  Both heat and humidity are threats that require attention in data centers.

Understanding how humidity in data centers affects electronics is an obvious requirement for Data Center Managers because it has a direct effect on a company’s bottom line.  Ensuring that your business has ideal data center humidity levels impacts the lifespan of equipment and can decrease utility costs.

Too little moisture in a data center can potentially lead to electrostatic discharge, which can trip internal sensors and shut down electronics.  This interruption requires time and manpower to repair.  Translation:  added financial expense.

Too much moisture in a data center can lead to condensation on equipment, which can cause them to short out or work overtime to eliminate the moisture.  This requires the use of more utilities.  Translation:  added financial expense.

Controlling the moisture content of air in the room is vital to sustaining equipment and bottom line.  Ravica is here to help you monitor your data center environment. 

Our product line is designed to help you protect your infrastructure from environmental hazards.  Our Temperature and Humidity Sensors have both temperature and humidity measuring capabilities in a single sensor.  This extends the capability of our SensorProbes to measure up to 8 temperature and 8 humidity sensing parameters, just by connecting 8 dual sensors.

Ravica can also help monitor your facilities for water leaks, voltage surges, smoke, and access.  We offer simple, reliable, and affordable solutions to protect your assets. 

Call us today to find out how cost-effective it is to protect your company’s data.

~Angela
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]]> http://www.ravica.com/blog/data-center/avoid-damage-caused-by-data-center-humidity/feed/ 1 Kansas Department of Health & Environment’s IT Infrastructure Failure is Recovering http://www.ravica.com/blog/sensorprobes/kansas-department-of-health-and-environment-it-infrastructure-failure-is-recovering/ http://www.ravica.com/blog/sensorprobes/kansas-department-of-health-and-environment-it-infrastructure-failure-is-recovering/#comments Mon, 30 Aug 2010 19:32:30 +0000 Angela http://www.ravica.com/blog/?p=1277 A recent news article reported on an IT infrastructure failure at Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE).  The issue was compounded by the fact that it occurred as students were preparing to enter school and needed birth certificates, immunization records, and other state documents.  Because they were no longer electronically accessible, approximately 120,000 of these records had to be retrieved from storage in a central Kansas salt mine, no doubt adding significant man-hours to workers across Kansas.

According to the Healthcare IT News article, the technical problems stemmed from a storage area network (SAN) failure, the hardware which stored agency records.  This hardware failure has been remidied, but they are still in the process of recovering electronic data. 

The article further stated that no data was compromised or lost, and KDHE is fortunately on the road to recovery, but with a $700,000 price tag for a full system fix

Hearing reports like these inevitably leads me to wonder about the root cause of the failure.  Was it related to temperature fluctuations in the data center?  Was there a voltage surge?  A water leak?  Did humidity levels affect the equipment?  Did someone spill coffee on it?

Although sympathetic to KDHE’s data retrieval struggles and incident expense, I can’t help but feel comforted knowing our own data center is protected with Ravica equipment which will alert us at the first sign of an environmental hazard.  Should the temperature fluctuate beyond our customized minimum and maximum parameters, notifications are sent immediately.  Ravica’s environmental monitoring devices are customizable for various business and residential needs.  Give us a call today to find out how we can help protect your infrastructure, before catastrophic system failures occur.

~Angela
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]]> http://www.ravica.com/blog/sensorprobes/kansas-department-of-health-and-environment-it-infrastructure-failure-is-recovering/feed/ 0 Is an environmentally sustainable data center possible? http://www.ravica.com/blog/general/is-an-environmentally-sustainable-data-center-possible/ http://www.ravica.com/blog/general/is-an-environmentally-sustainable-data-center-possible/#comments Fri, 26 Feb 2010 16:40:02 +0000 Jessica Raflo http://www.ravica.com/blog/?p=845 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. The first is HP’s wind-cooled Wynyard that open earlier this month. The 360,000 square foot data center, located on the Northeast coast of England, uses the frigid North Sea air to chill the air entering the server rooms through the forced air system. Initial testing indicates that the wind-cooled data center is 60% more energy efficient than conventional data centers. It’s the high-tech version of opening a window.
The second super-“cool” system out there is technology being developed by IBM for a zero-emission data center. The IBM system uses a cold-water circulating system under the floor of the data center. Because water is such an excellent coolant—capturing heat 4,000 times more efficiently than air—the system acts as a heat sink and literally sucks the excess heat out of the server racks. An added benefit of the water-cooled system is the ability to transfer the heat removed from the data center to other parts of the building, like administrative offices or lobbies, and use it to heat those spaces with very little energy consumption. The data center essentially serves as a hot water heater for the rest of the building!

From these two examples, it’s clear that there are options out there for designing sustainable HVAC systems that can meet the massive demand for cooling in data centers and server rooms. There is still a long way to go for data centers to be completely environmentally sustainable, but the industry is moving in leaps and bounds in that direction.

~Jessica
Follow Me on Twitter]]> http://www.ravica.com/blog/general/is-an-environmentally-sustainable-data-center-possible/feed/ 0 Physical Security for Data Centers http://www.ravica.com/blog/data-center/physical-security-for-data-centers/ http://www.ravica.com/blog/data-center/physical-security-for-data-centers/#comments Fri, 22 Jan 2010 18:02:04 +0000 Jessica Raflo http://www.ravica.com/blog/?p=790 Blue Server RoomData 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.

  • Install the Right SensorProbe. For optimum security monitoring, choose a SecurityProbe model.  The SecurityProbe has the same easy-to-use web interface as the BitSight with a Linux operating system that offers 128 MB of Flash and 64 MB of SDRAM.  With 8 ports for sensors and connections for 4 external cameras on each SecurityProbe, you can monitor all of your security conditions from a single interface.
  • Monitor All Potential Entry Points. In order for a security breach to occur, an unauthorized person must be able to physically gain access to the data center and do so unnoticed.  Make sure that doesn’t happen by installing a security sensor on every door, window, or emergency exit that could provide access to the data center.  The security sensor has a magnetic open/close switch that will trigger an automatic alert when any entry point is accessed.
  • Install Motion Detectors. As another line of defense, install a motion detector at key locations that will alert security personnel that a potential security issue is occurring.  The Ravica motion sensor has a RJ45 jack to plug directly into a port on the SecurityProbe.
  • Integrate High Quality Security Cameras. Install a variety of security cameras including fixed and Pan/Tilt cameras that can proactively capture crucial images as the events occur.  With the Ravica web-interface, you can set up notifications that will automatically trigger a time-stamped, picture log when an event occurs with the security sensor, motion detector or any other sensor.  The pictures are captured in a standard JPEG format at up to 640 x 480 pixels, so you get a clear image of the event.
  • Send a LOUD and Clear Message Regarding Security. Not only can notifications be set up to send email, voice, or text alerts to security personnel when a potential security breach is occurring; you can also include a siren/strobe light that can be triggered automatically by an alarm status on any other sensor.  The siren/strobe can also be triggered manually from the web-interface, deterring nefarious activity and giving a call-to-action signal to other personnel in the vicinity of the breach.

Whether your data center is large or small, Ravica can be part of the solution to help you protect your physical and intellectual assets from theft or sabotage.

~Jessica
Follow Me on Twitter]]> http://www.ravica.com/blog/data-center/physical-security-for-data-centers/feed/ 2 Data center in hot water http://www.ravica.com/blog/environmental-monitoring/data-center-in-hot-water/ http://www.ravica.com/blog/environmental-monitoring/data-center-in-hot-water/#comments Fri, 23 Oct 2009 13:41:45 +0000 JimmyD http://www.ravica.com/blog/?p=516 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.

frozen-pipe-burst-300x225Joe, 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

]]> http://www.ravica.com/blog/environmental-monitoring/data-center-in-hot-water/feed/ 0 Mount Wilson Observatory In Danger From L.A. Fire http://www.ravica.com/blog/general/mount-wilson-observatory-in-danger-from-l-a-fire/ http://www.ravica.com/blog/general/mount-wilson-observatory-in-danger-from-l-a-fire/#comments Wed, 02 Sep 2009 20:43:48 +0000 JimmyD http://www.ravica.com/blog/?p=449 observI just read this post on Slashdot:

“Mount Wilson is in danger from the Station fire burning near L.A. Their servers have gone offline, but there’s a temporary mirror cam. It doesn’t look good. Picture twenty-four on the L.A. Times photo gallery shows the observatory from the air. If anyone has any inside news on the condition of the facility, I’m sure there are lots of people on Slashdot that would love to hear it.”

It got me wondering about what type of SensorProbes they have. Most companies will never see this size of fire, but even a tiny fire can put a server room out of commission. That is why it is so important to use sensor probe technology to monitor our environment and alert us when something is wrong.

Anyway, I don’t want to use this as a sales pitch. So, let’s use the fire in California to remind us to check our home and office fire detection systems.

My prayers go out to all of the fire fighters, the people who have lost their homes and the people who’s homes are in danger.

- JimmyD

]]> http://www.ravica.com/blog/general/mount-wilson-observatory-in-danger-from-l-a-fire/feed/ 0 Ravica’s Sensor Controlled Relay – The Rosetta Stone? http://www.ravica.com/blog/data-center/ravicas-sensor-controlled-relay-the-rosetta-stone/ http://www.ravica.com/blog/data-center/ravicas-sensor-controlled-relay-the-rosetta-stone/#comments Wed, 12 Aug 2009 20:12:08 +0000 JimmyD http://www.ravica.com/blog/?p=381 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 amusement-park-holidayjpgissue 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

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