What parameters should be part of a data center environmental monitoring scheme?

Temperature: Many administrators look for rack air flow exhaust metrics, internal system temperatures and even CPU temperatures. The more information that is provided by the temperature control mechanisms, the faster an engineer can nip issues before they become serious problems.

Humidity and water control: Water leaking from chiller lines or other sources can damage electronic systems. Similarly, excessively humid air can condense into liquid water that poses an equal danger to servers and systems. Deploy water sensors and humidity sensors at strategic locations both inside and outside of the rack.

Aisle conditions: Containment has emerged as an important part of cooling management, so administrators should distribute environmental sensors within the hot and/or cold aisles. This can offer a broader picture of what’s happening within a cooling zone.

Static electricity sensors: Excessively dry air, as well as improperly grounded equipment or personnel, can accumulate potentially harmful levels of static charge. Static electricity monitoring equipment located at intervals around the data center can report on the presence of potentially large charges.

Server room and rack entry: This is all about physical security: doors opening and closing. Room and rack entry sensors send alerts if the data center or rack has been improperly entered. Advanced environments can activate a camera that points to the rack where the cage has been opened.

Thermal Mapping & Monitoring Software

env1The TrellisThermal System Manager module provides thermal management for the dynamic and often complex data center environment. As part of the Trellis Enterprise Solution, this module provides monitoring, reporting and alarm management for the entire mechanical chain from chillers and cooling towers to CRAC and CRAH cooling units. Ever changing thermal patterns can now be managed to optimize efficiency without sacrificing reliability. Use of this module helps prevent wasteful over cooling of the data center, and eliminate troublesome hot spots that consume support resources and increase the risk of downtime.

With the Trellis™ Thermal System Manager, you can safely adjust temperatures and fan speeds directly from the Trellis platform and monitor the effect in real-time. You can also decide, with assurance, which cooling units are inefficient and which are safe to eliminate or turn-off. By having this information, you can drive down the energy usage, improve sustainability and lower your carbon footprint.

Trellis™ Thermal System Manager Benefits:

Track thermal improvements over time and document results

Alarm management, notification, and thresholds for environmental sensors

Optimize cooling temperatures to lower cooling energy costs

Rack level metrics to balance cooling and the IT heat load

Manage cooling units and optimized based on performance and efficiency

View IT service processor information for added protection against downtime

Monitor the cooling system and how it impacts my day to day operations

Monitor and analyze capacity to determine utilization, efficiency, and future p

env2Trellis™ Site Manager tracks and reports on the health of facility-critical devices and provides information on power, cooling and environmental conditions such as temperature, humidity, air flow and leak detection. Its customizable notification and threshold validation functions allow users to focus on active alarms that need to be attended to immediately, thus enabling the effective and efficient use of support personnel.

With Trellis Site Manager:

Data center engineers and technicians can focus on issues which may need attention, thus allowing effective and efficient use of support personnel

The time required to identify and resolve issues with critical infrastructure devices is reduced, thus increasing availability of the data center

env3Sunbird PowerIQ Real-time interactive environmental monitoring  provides color coded bird’s eye view of key data including active power, current & capacity, temperature, humidity, air flow, differential pressure and events on per cabinet basis

A real-time interactive data center health map of your critical infrastructure including CRACs, UPSs, Floor PDUs, Remote Power Panels, Racks, Rack PDUs, IT Devices, etc. improves uptime by being aware of incidents before they become problems such as hot spot formations, SLA violations, over charges and loss of redundancy.

Operational Efficiency – Use slide show mode to display real-time updates for power and environmental health, rack cooling performance, energy capacity, forecasts and consumption, weather services, maps, video and much more on a large screen. Dashboard also allows you to configure screen size, layout and charts.

env4Environet DCIM makes data center management simple by providing an easy-to-use, holistic view of the data center. Geist’s Environet Facility provides the solution you need to make informed decisions regarding key data center infrastructure.

Environet Facility’s graphically rich interface and intuitive design make monitoring the data center easier than ever before. With SNMP, Modbus, BACnet and LONworks capability, Environet Facility communicates in real-time with a variety of equipment from many manufacturers. Users can access Environet Facility remotely through a Web-based user interface and Environet sends immediate notifications when an alarm condition is triggered.

env5RF Code environmental sensors and corresponding software ensure you’re alerted of temperature and humidity changes, leaks, power level usage drops or increases and any other environmental shift requiring your attention.

Get real-time data and warnings when problems are detected

Find the right balance between energy costs and asset reliability

Prevent disasters and minimize downtime

Correlate environmental and asset data for accurate density management

Monitor temperature, humidity, fluid detection, air pressure, rack level power usage and more in real-time

env6The Geist WatchDog 15-P is a self-contained unit with on-board temperature and humidity/dew-point sensors along with built-in PoE.  It has an input capacity of four 

env7The Geist WatchDog 100-P is a self-contained unit with built-in PoE and on-board temperature and humidity/dew-point sensors.  It has an input capacity of eight external sensors and an output of one NO/NC relay contact for triggering external devices like an auto-dialer. 

env8The Geist WatchDog 1250 provides Web-based remote surveillance of temperature, relative humidity, dew point, airflow, light, sound and additional sensors connected to the unit. It comes equipped with an LCD display with scrolling measurements and a built-in audible alarm. It is especially useful for monitoring environmental conditions in critical applications such as data centers, server rooms, network closets or other critical facilities. 

env9The Geist T3HD is an enhanced version of the Temperature, Humidity, Dew Point Sensor (THD) with four 6P6C modular jacks (aka RJ12), one for output to host device, a supplementary input for daisy-chaining and two additional inputs strictly compatible with temperature sensors.  The unit comes kitted with 3 FT and 6FT temperature sensors and is especially ideal for monitoring top, middle and bottom of  a server rack.

env11Geist ENV-DIT, RS-Wi Digital temperature measurement and dry contact (NO/NC) input sensor. Battery operated, microprocessor-controlled. Compact ABS enclosure, transmission range of up to 100 feet (30.5m).

env12Geist ENV-ASA1, RS-Wi analog input (0-20mA) sensor. Battery operated 12 bit analog-to-digital converter, microprocessor-controlled, 418MHz, FCC-certified radio transmitter. Transmission range of up to 600 feet and battery life up to four years.

env13Geist ENV-AS2, RS-Wi analog input transmitter (0-5vdc) sensor. Battery operated 12 bit analog-to-digital converter, microprocessor-controlled 418MHz FCC-certified radio transmitter.

env14Geist ENV-PR, RS-Wi point repeater, 418MHz RF receiver with an integrated 900MHz transmitter. It receives error checked data packets from wireless 418MHz sensors, processes the data, and then transmits the data to other ENV-PR mesh repeaters. 

env15Geist ENV-THS-2, RS-Wi digital temperature/humidity sensor. Battery operated, microprocessor-controlled 418MHz, FCC-certified radio transmitter. 

env16Geist Water Sensor– Monitor water leaks or floods.  This sensor triggers the environmental monitor upon detecting a film of water between the metal contacts on the unit.  The sensor will not give false alarms due to condensation or high humidity.

env17The Raritan EMX is a central connection point for all of Raritan’s environmental sensors. The EMX smart rack controller offers up to eight sensor ports, eight feature ports for Raritan’s dynamic asset-tracking solution and eight RS-485 ports, all in a 1U form factor. Raritan’s rack monitoring solution helps data center and facilities managers:

• Minimize the hours needed to track IT assets. • Ensure uptime by monitoring racks for possible hot spots. • Save on cooling costs by confidently raising data center temperatures. • Maintain cabinet security w/ USB webcams and contact closure sensors. • Improve data center uptime by receiving environment alerts. • Make strategic decisions on environmental design and modifications.

env18Raritan DPX-T1. Single temperature sensor with 10ft (3m) cable and RJ-12 connector. It is designed for easy installation at IT equipment racks by plugging the RJ-12 connector into one of Raritan’s rack PDUs, controllers, transfer switches or branch circuit monitors. Raritan DPX-T1H1. Single combination temperature and humidity sensor with 10ft (3m) cable and RJ-12 connector. Provides real-time temperature and humidity data to ensure your datacenter environment is in control.

env19Raritan DPX-T2H2. Dual combination temperature and humidity sensors with 10ft (3m) cable from the RJ-12 connector to the first sensor and another 10ft (3m) of cable from the first sensor to the second sensor. Instrument the cold and hot aisle of your datacenter rack with this one sensor string.

env20Raritan DPX-T3H1.  Three temperature sensors with the middle sensor also containing an humidity sensor. The DPX-T3H1 was designed to easily monitor rack temperatures at the bottom, middle and top of a rack as recommended by ASHRAE. See the complete environmental picture of your rack from top to bottom.

env21Raritan DPX-WSC-35-KIT,  11.5ft (3.5m) rope water (leak) sensor and a contact closure sensor for detecting water or water and glycol leaks. Detect leaks easily anywhere along the length of this flexible cable. Wrap around a rack with in-row cooling.  Raritan DPX-WSC-70-KIT, 23ft (7m) rope water (leak) sensor and a contact closure sensor for detecting water or water and glycol leaks. Detect leaks easily anywhere along the length of this flexible cable. Longer length allow you to wrap around a datacenter CRAC unit.

env22Raritan DPX-WSF-KIT, Floor water (leak) sensor and a contact closure sensor for detecting water or water and glycol leaks. Reliably warns of water leaks at critical points below a raised floor.

env23The Liebert TW420 and THW420 sensors provide temperature and humidity inputs to the Universal Monitor. Liebert TW420 is a wall mounted, remote temperature sensor that provides a 4-20mA signal. Monitored temperature range is 45°F to 96°F (7°C to 35°C). Liebert THW420 is a wall mounted, remote combination temperature and humidity sensor that provides two 4-20mA signals. Monitored temperature range is 45°F to 96°F (7°C to 35°C), with 0 to 100% RH.

env24The Liebert OpenComms EM environmental monitor is a compact, half-duplex device designed to monitor data center insfrastructure temperature, humidity, water detection and contact closure and notify personnel when those conditions exceed user-defined limits.

env25Emerson Liqui-tect Two Channel Leak Detection System.  Liebert Liqui-tect two-channel leak detection provides data center monitoring for two different areas with direct-read at the control unit location, as well as the ability to communicate with Liebert SiteScan Web centralized monitoring system or a building management system. Liebert Liqui-tect direct-read leak detection system has two independent channels to monitor two different areas. Each channel can monitor up to 5,000 feet of Liebert LT500Y leak detection cable. 60Hz or 50Hz.

env26Emerson LT460 and LT410 Zone Leak Detection Sensor.  Liebert LT460 zone leak detection sensor modules install quickly and work simply for reliable warning of potentially hazardous moisture leaks within the data center infrastructure. The supervised zone leak detector uses up to 100 feet of flexible Liebert moisture sensing cable, offering protection for hard to reach spots and sensitive areas that require protection against leaks.

env27E-Line  DIRAK Access and control for IT rooms with or without management systems in place.

 Data security in data centers is of fundamental importance. Software-based data protection has been evolving continuously for years. The physical protection of data and network racks is equally indispensable. This is because identification, organization and control are a must, especially where lots of people have access. For these purposes, E-LINE by DIRAK offers you innovative solutions that meet the very highest requirements in terms of security, control, convenience and integration capability. You can integrate all handles in the MLR series into an existing management system, thereby managing centrally who can access which server racks. In addition, you can see at all times which racks have been opened by whom, and when.