Two Types of Environmental Monitors

Welcome to Keep Your Cool - a series tackling simple cooling optimization strategies for the busy data center operators by former busy data center operator, Gregg Haley.

You need to monitor your data center environment to ensure the reliable operation of your IT equipment. However, there are thousands of environmental monitors on the market. How do you pick the right one? 

Let’s begin with a simple question- what is environmental monitoring? This is the process of measuring temperature, humidity and other environmental factors in the data center to ensure that the equipment is operating safely and efficiently. There are two common applications for Data Center Environmental Monitor - permanent and temporary monitoring. 

Permanent Monitoring

This is the process of placing sensors throughout the facility and feeding the information back to a centralized management system. This is an extremely effective way to monitor the daily health of the Data Center, and get immediate alerts if there is a condition outside the recommended range. 

Because this approach is comprehensive, it requires an extensive set-up process, system downtime during installation, intensive vetting process to prevent false alarms, and the training and hiring of operators who can monitor the control station 24X7. Moreover, these systems require significant investment, upwards of a million dollars, plus the expense of hiring skilled personnel to operate them.

Temporary Monitoring

Temporary Environmental Monitoring is when you need to quickly spot check what’s happening in the white space. This is essential when you need to respond to a permanent sensor alert, or need to calibrate that the permanent sensors are working correctly.

Often these are more cost-effective solutions to gather data without the overhead of processing large scale data or downtime. Moreover, temporary monitors are essential for the problem solving dynamic in the data center. When there is a heat load issue or an energy efficiency push, it’s critical to make data driven decisions so no changes negatively impact the daily operations. 

The AUDIT-BUDDY™ System

AUDIT-BUDDY is a cost-effective and intuitive tool that captures both real-time and long-term scans of the environmental conditions of a data center, without the need for any infrastructure modifications or downtime. AUDIT-BUDDY is designed to allow the Data Center operator with a limited budget to monitor the data center environment without requiring the installation of a complicated monitoring system and the associated overhead of processing gigabytes worth of collected data.

Data Loggers:

Data Logger

These are simple, inexpensive devices that record temperature and humidity. It's an easy way to collect data, but requires some experience to parse through the data. Moreover, these devices only record information at a single point, and cannot account for the thermal differences across the rack height, across the aisle, across the server or how the thermal conditions change over time. 

Infrared Guns: (IR)

Another simple solution is an IR gun. In the click of a button, you can click the IR and get a colorful image of the environment.  These only measure the surface temperature of the server and not the true air temperature passing through and cooling the server. Accuracy is strongly influenced by the surface color. Since minor changes to the temperature can dramatically affect the operating efficiency and budget, data centers need accurate measurements and IR guns are not a viable option.

About the Author

Gregg Haley is a data center and telecommunications executive with more than 30 years of leadership experience. Most recently served as the Senior Director of Data Center Operations - Global for Limelight Networks. Gregg provides data center assessment and optimization reviews showing businesses how to reduce operating expenses by identifying energy conservation opportunities. Through infrastructure optimization energy expenses can be reduced by 10% to 30%.

In addition to Gregg's data center efforts, he has a certification from the Disaster Recovery Institute International (DRII) as Business Continuity Planner. In November of 2005, Gregg was a founding member and Treasurer of the Association of Contingency Planners - Greater Boston Chapter, a non-profit industry association dedicated to the promotion and education of Business Continuity Planning. Gregg had served on the chapter's Board of Directors for the first four years. Gregg is also a past member of the American Society of Industrial Security (ASIS). Gregg currently serves as the Principal Consultant for Purkay Labs.