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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nMonitoring the power status of individual servers and\ndevices is important as well. Stories about a power cord that was accidentally\njostled by foot traffic, or one that was mistakenly unplugged when doing some\nmaintenance, are abound. No one wants to be \u201cthat person\u201d who brought down a\ncritical server or router by mistake. Being alerted when an important piece of\nnetwork hardware is not receiving power can mean the difference between a quick\ntrip to your server room, or hours of panic not knowing what\u2019s causing your\neCommerce database to be down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To many smaller organizations, their \u201cdata center\u201d is really\na room within their office space (or perhaps even a closet) that houses a few\nservers, some switches and routers, a firewall, and perhaps phone system\nhardware. These rooms weren\u2019t built or designed to host sensitive electronics,\nand don\u2019t have electrical wiring or network cabling designed for the heavy\nloads that several high-capacity devices can place on your infrastructure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWell, it\u2019s just a small room, I don\u2019t see why there might be a problem<\/em>\u201d are famous last words, usually heard just before the accounting server, or internet router suddenly stops working. The size of the room your servers and equipment are hosted in is irrelevant; the importance of those devices, the services they provide, and the data they store are by far and away the critical factor in deciding how to monitor. Ensuring that critical hardware is receiving power should be one of the first key items in your business continuity plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Power monitoring doesn\u2019t need to stop at your server room, either.\nAre you relying on HVAC to cool your data center? We\u2019re guessing the answer to\nthat question is \u201cyes\u201d\u2026 so it makes sense to monitor power status to your air\nconditioning units to make sure they\u2019re functioning and powered up. No one\nwants to walk into a 135 degree, completely silent data center on a Monday\nmorning, with the phone ringing off the hook thanks to a deluge of employees\nwho can\u2019t access files and mission-critical data that are stored on those\nnow-silent servers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Organizations in multi-tenant buildings may not be directly\nresponsible for maintenance of wiring and power, however any outages or problems\nthat happen will directly affect you. Monitoring your power status, and the\npower status of your equipment, may mean that you can notify your facility\nmanagement of problems before they\u2019re aware themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The same scenario applies to organizations that outsource\ntheir server hosting and data center services to a third-party colocation provider.\nYour data host may be monitoring power for their own needs, however they may\nonly be providing you with bandwidth and traffic reports to\/from your servers.\nPower reports (and reports on other important environmental factors such as temperature\nand humidity\/water leaks) may not be included in your colocation package if\nthey\u2019re even offered at all. Installing your own power monitoring will act as both\na check as well as a safeguard to ensure maximum uptime for your servers and\nhelp prevent against unwanted data loss due to power failure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n