Fortunately, we can have that sense of trust with a Ravica environmental sensor.  Ravica security monitors placed in your property can alert you to the presence of property hazards like smoke and water.  While you are away, you can still feel secure knowing you will be alerted to hazards as soon as they happen.

A Ravica team member just received an alert at work this past week from his home’s system.  He was notified of unauthorized access to the house.  Fortunately, the culprit was his extremely mischievous Dachshund.  But what if it hadn’t been?  Wouldn’t you want to know immediately if someone is in your home?

First alerts are extremely important to prevent serious damage.  An early alert from a smoke detector can make the difference between very minor damage and total destruction.  If caught early enough, proper authorities can be notified and damages can be minimized.

But what good is a smoke detector if you can’t hear its alarm?  What happens when your home is in Boca Raton, but you are on vacation in Venice?  Ravica’s devises are extremely versatile and can use various mediums to send alert notifications.  Just imagine having the freedom to travel knowing you will receive an instant alert about any power outages, smoke, or water leaks.  These alerts can be sent through email, mobile phone text, or Skype.

During the work day and during extended absences and vacations, you can feel confident that your property is protected, even without the Mayberry police force.

~Angela
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Sadly, this type of water damage is fairly common.  Not as common as the Old Spice Guy videos on YouTube, but common nonetheless.  

This type of accident can severely cripple a business and shouldn’t be expected or taken lightly.  My associate’s story serves as a glowing example of the importance of environmental sensors.  A Ravica SensorProbe would have notified him immediately of the situation.  He could have received notifications through email, Skype, Twitter, or texts on his cell phone, and the damage could have been dramatically reduced or potentially totally eliminated.

The SensorProbe is a versatile device to alert on the presence of water, temperature fluctuations, and smoke before the damage is crippling to a business.  The sensors can be placed virtually anywhere and aren’t limited to just data centers or offices. 

Environmental monitoring sensors are more than just fancy smoke detectors.  Devices from Ravica can prevent the need to repair damaged facilties and recreate lost data, saving you tremendous amounts of money.  They are versatile devices designed to keep you in control. 

Contact us today for more information.  At the very least, contact the Old Spice Guy.  He seems to have all the answers.

~Angela
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Winter requires some special preparation for the inside of your facility as well.  With snow and ice  comes the threat of water pipes bursting and power outages.  Make sure that your facility is protected by having a back-up generator in place.  You should also be sure that the main water pipes and any pipes that are running along uninsulated walls have been winterized.

You also might want to think about installing an environmental monitoring system that can automatically alert you to any water leaks or other cold-weather problems that might occur.  Ravica’s line of Sensor Probes and plug-and-play Intelligent Sensors can help to prevent major weather-related damage to your property and data.  Whether it is a water sensor to monitor for leaking pipes; a temperature sensor to make sure that your data center is cool enough and your employees are warm enough; or a camera to monitor the street outside to see if the snow plows have shown up yet, you can create the system that meets your needs this winter and will work for you during the rest of the year too.

Seeing all the news footage of flooded streets made me think about how  important it is to be prepared for water infiltration due to flooding.  According to the Red Cross, floods are among the most frequent and costly natural disasters, causing more than 90% of the damage related to natural disasters.  On average, floods cause more than $4 billion in damages worldwide, per year.  Proper preparation is equally important for businesses and homeowners.

There are a lot  of preventative measures that can be taken to avoid water damage, such as  moving vital electronics to higher levels and raising mechanical equipment off the floor.  But what if a flood occurs after hours or while a homeowner is away?  How can you make sure that your equipment is as safe as possible?  One way is to have a water detection sensor in place that is connected to your network and set up to alert you via SNMP or email, when a water leak is detected. With automatic notification, you can get to the problem fast or at least call someone to check on the situation.

Ravica provides water detection solutions that can be scaled equally well for a large data center or a single family home. If you’ve got a location where flood damage is a danger, we’d love to help you design a water leak monitoring system that can help protect your data and valuables.

~ Jessica

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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Joe, 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

Yahoo last month announced plans to build its greenest data center in Lockport, N.Y. Yahoo co-founder and Chief Yahoo David Filo explains in his blog that the data center will be designed to use 100% outside air to cool the servers. And the resource used to power the data center and the servers will be the renewable hydroelectric power from the Niagara Falls.    
Filo writes that the data center design will have an annualized average PUE (power usage effectiveness) of 1.1 or better. The company’s other facilities in Washington are powered by wind and hydroelectric sources. Outside air (or what the industry terms “free cooling”) is used for cooling most of the year, helping Yahoo to reduce energy consumption by 40% to 50%.

Search rival Google uses free cooling almost year round in its data center in Belgium, where the average summer temperature is between 66°F and 71°F (19°C and 22°C), writes Data Center Knowledge. That temperature range falls way below the 80°F (27°C) temperature that Google maintains for its data centers, adds Data Center Knowledge.

You’ll recall last week in this blog that our friend, Chuck Cahoon, solutions architect at CDW, recommended that the ambient temperature range in data centers should be between 68°F to 75°F (20°C to 24°C). Companies that have set the temperature higher than 75°F say they see savings spent on air conditioning as a result, according a separate Data Center Knowledge article. That article cites Mark Monroe of Sun Microsystems as saying that data centers can save 4% in energy costs for every increased degree in baseline temperature.

The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) in its 2008 ASHRAE Environmental Guidelines for Datacom Equipment expanded its recommended operating envelope. The low-end and high-end temperatures in its 2008 guidelines are 64.4°F (18°C) and 80.6° (27°C), respectively. This differs from its 2004 guidelines for low-end and high-end temperatures of 68°F and 77°F, respectively.

However, Data Center Knowledge warns that raising the temperature could leave companies with less time to recover from a cooling failure. Operating at a higher temperature should only be done by customers that have a high understanding of the cooling conditions in their facility, Data Center Knowledge adds.

The ASHRAE guidelines also note other issues for data centers operating at higher temperatures:

• Gains in energy efficiency could be offset by the data center equipment having to work harder to compensate for the higher inlet air temperatures.
• The higher temperatures could cause condensation on the refrigerated coils of refrigerated cooling systems, requiring data centers to humidify to replace the lost moisture in the air. (This is where humidity monitoring is essential.)
• Higher temperatures could result in noisier data centers.

For data centers operating at higher temperatures, environmental monitoring that encompasses temperature monitoring, humidity monitoring, and water leaks is key.

We can’t depend on our noses to do your mildew monitoring because we can’t be in a dozen places at once all the time.

There is an easier way. Our water sensor can monitor for water leaks. The cable for the actual sensor can be up to 100 feet away from the BitSight. Because its unique design, it can be used to notify when water levels drop too low as well.

The humidity sensors we manufacture can be run 1,000 feet and fished through walls to measure humidity in air ducts, crawl spaces, etc. As a bonus, the same unit performs temperature monitoring and measure as well.

Ravica has a complete line of intelligent environmental monitoring solutions to help protect your business from a environmental disaster. All units support SNMP and send alerts in numerous formats.

- Mike

Bonnie Schneider reports for CNN that as of as early as Thursday, May 28th, the first Tropical Depression had already formed just over 300 miles south of Providence, Rhode Island. Winds, however, did not exceed 35 mph. This early storm turned out to be little more than a hazard to nearby fishing vessels, but could the early storm activity be an omen of future seasonal dangers? According to hurricane expert Robbie Berg of the National Hurricane Center in Miami, Florida, “A flurry of activity in late May or early June is not a sign of what’s to come.”

It’s good to know that despite the early indications of an active 2009 hurricane season, there is no reason for a Swine Flu like panic. However, regardless of whether this year will be any worse or better than the typical hurricane season, it is important for those in storm prone areas to take their normal yearly precautions. It could be said that any hurricane season is a bad hurricane season.

For those of us up here in the great state of Maine, we don’t have to worry as much. However, there are many of us that enjoy summers in Maine and winters in any one of the southern states. Recently, I helped a customer configure an environmental system for his summer home in Florida to watch for any water leaks, during the months when he was not there.

The system was simple to design and implement. Basically, a few water sensors were strategically placed around the house; one in the basement, two on the first floor and one in the attic. The customer liked the portability and size of the BitSight2; so with four sensors to attach, he needed two SensorProbes. We gave both BitSights external IPs on his home network and loaded them on the Internet, where he could hit them from his home in Maine.

Now, in the event that he has leaking or flooding on any floor of his summer home, the BitSight will alarm him immediately. Luckily for him, he has neighbors that live there year-round. So he can call someone to check things out, if his sensors alarm him, all the while being 3,000 miles away.

The BitSight2 line of environmental monitoring sensors are great for data centers and offices, but the size and flexibility of these entry level units makes them suitable for home use as well.

Are you putting measures in place to watch your home for water leaks, while you are away this hurricane season?

~ Jon Mills
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