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.

Awareness
The second part to the equation is being aware of what is going on in your data center. We’ve already discussed the security side of data center awareness by monitoring your data center with cameras, security sensors for doors and windows, as well as motion detectors. However, as I mentioned, knowing of any present water leaks is equally important.

Placing a water leak sensor in trouble spots can be incredibly informative. Where are these trouble spots? Typically, network administrators want to watch for water leaks, first and foremost, directly beneath server racks. Obviously, we hope we are already aware of any present water before it gets anywhere near the server racks, but this gives us the last ditch baseline type of alert – the dam is breaking (no pun intended) and something needs to be fixed immediately. After we have our racks covered, we want to put water sensors near any nearby windows, doors, AC units or HVAC systems, as well as any open ventilation.

The Ravica line of SensorProbes offers key alerting features like email and text alerts, even alerting via Skype. Using the Sensor Controled Relay, a user could even turn on a sump pump system when a water sensor goes into alert.

So, while it is important to keep tabs on the temperature and humidity of your data room, it is also important to make sure you protect the expensive equipment that occupies that facility from water damage.

~ Jon Mills
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