Room Alert ‘Insider Look’ – Monitoring The Environment Of An AVTECH Data Center

We often talk about different scenarios where Room Alert is able to provide data center monitoring (among many other types of facilities) and help track temperature, humidity, power, flood, smoke, air flow, and more.

Rather than talk in general terms, we wanted to give an exact situation Room Alert is providing data center environment monitoring. So we’ll talk about how we monitor one of our own data centers with Room Alert, GoToMyDevices cloud software, and Device ManageR! We’ll publish updates to this periodically in future articles as well, with the goal being to provide a series of real examples of how to make the most of monitoring with Room Alert, share challenges we have encountered, and explain how our own challenges have led to improvements in our products and leverage these lessons learned.

Data Center Monitoring with Room Alert

Our primary data center here at AVTECH houses a number of server cabinets along with some miscellaneous servers and appliances; we also store and replicate data offsite with a cloud hosting provider for redundancy and geographic failover.

One of the unique and cool (pun intended) aspects of our data center is that it’s cooled by a fresh air cooling system designed by another Rhode Island business partner of ours, Schroff Technologies. The fresh air system pulls cool air from the crawl space under our building and forces it through the data center, and it exhausts through a set of automatically controlled louvers.

When the weather is at the higher end of the temperature range, we have an air conditioning unit within the data center to help supplement the cool air from the SchroffTech fresh air cooling system. Here in New England, we find we can effectively cool our data center with filtered fresh air for over 10 months of the year. No air conditioning means a significant savings in electricity consumption… up to 90% savings.

To help monitor all of the areas of the data center, including all of the server racks, we have a Room Alert 32E combined with a number of Digital Temperature Sensors that allow us to monitor the temperatures of the crawl space, air conditioner vent, air flow louvers, and the front and back of each server rack. Additionally, we’re measuring the electricity consumption of our air conditioner using a Current Loop sensor connected to the analog input on the Room Alert 32E. This lets us know exactly how much we’re saving when the fresh air is cooling our data center rather than the air conditioner.

The data center is on the second floor of our building, and while flooding isn’t a big concern for us at this location, there’s always a possibility of burst pipes leaking into the data center. To help monitor for that potential, we have a Flood Sensor in the data center to alert us if any water is detected.

Logging Environment Data for Alerts and Reporting

The Room Alert in our data center is constantly logging and reporting data from the various sensors. All of the IT staff and management have access to that data through GoToMyDevices; this way they can all be alerted if something happens. Being able to access the reports offered through GoToMyDevices also lets them track any trends on temperature changes through the data center. Since GoToMyDevices is cloud-based, reports on all of the sensor data can be accessed anytime, from anywhere.

One of the critical servers in the data center also runs our Device ManageR software which logs all of the data from our Room Alert as well. Running Device ManageR in addition to using GoToMyDevices allows us to trigger actions on the data center network in the event of an alert. For example, if there’s a prolonged power outage detected when the office is closed, Device ManageR will automatically trigger controlled shutdowns of non-essential servers. This not only conserves backup power, it also helps to make sure that mission-critical data isn’t lost by a server shutting down improperly.

Device ManageR will also trigger controlled shutdowns if something were to happen with the air conditioning within the data center as well. By automatically powering down non-essential servers and services, less heat is generated, allowing the essential servers to stay up and running while the air conditioning is evaluated.

Hardware, Software, The Cloud, and The Internet Of Things

By using all three of our products together, we’re not only making sure our data center is monitored, it’s designed to take specific automatic steps in the event of an environment problem. Using the power of the Internet of Things allows both us and our customers to do far more than just monitor our environment remotely. Specific actions will report to our email addresses and cell phones, and proactive steps are triggered to help prevent further potential issues.

This is a setup that each and every one of our clients can copy, since all Room Alert users get Device ManageR and GoToMyDevices access included with every purchase. Room Alert and Sensors help gather various data points and report them to the cloud-based GoToMyDevices. GoToMyDevices allows us to set alerts and track trends over time to warn of potential problems, while the locally installed Device ManageR can use that same data to proactively shut down servers gracefully to conserve power, protect data, and reduce heat.

If you have questions about data center monitoring, or how you can protect your data center or critical facility with Room Alert the same way we protect our own, please let us know! You can call us at 888-220-6700 or 401-628-1600, email Sales@AVTECH.com, or hop into a Live Chat with a Product Specialist right now using the app on the left side of your screen.

Room Alert is environment monitoring made easy… don’t wait until it’s too late!

Note: The former GoToMyDevices online monitoring and management platform was migrated into RoomAlert.com in December 2017. For more information, please see our announcement article and FAQ.