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Server Room Environment Monitoring? 40

Posted by Cliff from the keeping-your-boxen-comfortable dept.
WizardX asks: "At my new job we are in the process of starting to Do Things Right(tm). One of these things is putting the computer room (where the IT staff also resides), on its own cooling circuit. We want to monitor and track the temp and humidity in the room. The tracking part makes it more difficult. I really am not familiar with devices to do this. I plan on monitoring with MRTG, so a device that could plug into our network would be nice, but as long as it can dump the data to a computer (*nix or Windows, I really don't care) I will be happy. What have you seen or used?" I think the submitter is looking for something along the line of these devices, but maybe some of you have run into something better?
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Server Room Environment Monitoring? More

Server Room Environment Monitoring?

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  • Netbotz (Score:3, Informative)

    by agrounds ( 227704 ) * on Wednesday April 30, 2003 @12:27PM (#5843992)
    I think Netbotz [netbotz.com] are the best I've seen so far. I have used them in multiple server rooms for security as well as monitoring. They have temp, humidity, a camera, and are web-enabled. Very sweet!

    Check these out [netbotz.com]

  • Host based (Score:2, Interesting)

    by acaird ( 530225 )
    Some servers give you this for free. I use Suns (E450s) and they report CPU and environmental temperature. Then I use BigBrother and the temperature larrd module to graph it. BigBrother is at bb4.com and the modules (temp. and larrd) at deadcat.net. It's not fancy, but it was cheap and easy.

    Good luck.

    Andrew

    • Re:Host based (Score:4, Informative)

      by SpaFF ( 18764 ) on Wednesday April 30, 2003 @12:49PM (#5844228) Homepage
      This is how we do it in my server room. All of our RAID controllers (Dell Poweredge RAID controllers - A derivitive of the Adaptec controllers) let you get two different temperature readings off of the controller. We just poll these vaules from a few of the servers and average.

  • Outside the box, inside the room (Score:3, Funny)

    by macx666 ( 194150 ) * on Wednesday April 30, 2003 @12:41PM (#5844152) Homepage
    Why not go with what works, and may be cheaper? Go with a standard weather device like
    • Texas Weather Instruments
    • Oregon Scientific
    • Davis Vantage
    • etc.
    Plugs in to a computer, logs just fine, and you can post your results to wunderground :-P

  • Depends on your budget (Score:4, Informative)

    by John Q. Public ( 113556 ) on Wednesday April 30, 2003 @12:43PM (#5844177) Homepage
    NetBotz [netbotz.com] are the best-known and most fully-featured system, but they're kind of pricey.

    A cheaper alternative is APC's solution [apcc.com] while providing just the environment info you want.

    If you are also looking into remote power management, Server Technology's Power Tower [servertech.com] product is being integrated with a new environmental device (for $100-200 or so, according to reports) which allows you to keep your interactions and monitoring all on one interface for environmental and power both.
    • We're using the APC Environment monitoring device here. Low cost, works well, has an embedded web server for ad-hoc polling and is SNMP-pollable for MRTG integration (or any other).
      It also has dry contacts for things like door sensors or HVAC alerts.
      • One thing I'm looking for is how to have the dry contacts only report to the snmp, not email/page me about everytime one is triggered. For now, procmail looks like the best way to just silently drop the email.
  • We use APC Ups's in the server rooms I maintain. They have SmartSlot slot built into all rackmount systems that can have a network managment card put into it.

    They pull SNMP data from the UPS as well as tempature information from the room.

    Check it out: http://apcc.com/products/configure/index.cfm?base_ sku=SU3000RM3U&totalwatts=50#
  • I believe this startup will be producing just the sort of products you're looking for :-)

    -psy

  • Buy or build your own (Score:3, Interesting)

    by FattMattP ( 86246 ) on Wednesday April 30, 2003 @12:51PM (#5844255) Homepage
    If you want to buy a temp sensor which is recommended by the Nagios [nagios.org] people: http://www.sensatronics.com/TempTrax/index.html [sensatronics.com]

    If you want to roll your own: http://quozl.netrek.org/ts/ [netrek.org]

    I bought the kit for the one on the second link and it works great.

  • Set up your own... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Jess ( 11386 ) <gehinjc @ a l u m .mit.edu> on Wednesday April 30, 2003 @12:54PM (#5844297)
    I currently use digitemp [brianlane.com] to monitor the temperature in my computer room using Dallas Semiconductor [maxim-ic.com] DS18S20 [maxim-ic.com] temperature sensors. I had thought that they also had iButtons that also monitored humidity, but I don't see them now.

  • A PLC? (Score:1)

    by skwm ( 581559 )
    At my work, we built a humidity & temperature monitoring system using Modicon PLCs (Programmable Logic Controllers) which was used in Steinway Piano's manufacturing center. It monitored the temp/humidty of several rooms, and had some alarming & logging facilities.
    You could do this with a Momentum PLC (one of the low-end of Modicons product lines) and a humidity sensor or two. For the PLC, you would need an I/O base and either a CPU module (which plugs into the I/O base)if you want to perform log
    • These would be good if the poster were trying to control the environment, but he is only trying to monitor. There are many instruments with serial ports that do exactly what he wants.
  • You're sitting in the room. I think the monitoring part is handled. You can use your trusty skin for that. If you feel hot, chances are your systems do too. You even have a redundant monitoring system if you have co-workers in the room. :)

    MRTG is great for tracking. Almost any decent piece of network-connected hardware will have a temperature sensor in it that can be polled via SNMP (which MRTG uses by default). It's just a little more complicated than the default setup. Be careful though, I've be
    • Speaking of extreme switches, we've got a 48 porter (we have probably 300 of these things) that, about once a month, reports it's at 150 degrees celsius.

      But for the most part, they are reliable....
  • It's generally a temperature/humidity sensor with pens that record data to a card.

    They're cheap, effective and don't break.
  • IMS-4000's [ims-4000.com] for all of our environmental alarms and much of our system heartbeat monitoring. We still have to use IPsentry for specialized probes (finger and https mostly) but it is a very cool system. If you use it, remember to record useful error messages, unless you know what IP goes with what device for everything on your network that the device does by default.
  • The one we use doesn't report info. to a computer, but there may be other models available here [freezealarm.com] that do. The one we use cost about $200US and calls up to three phone numbers with an automated message, letting you know that a low/high temp. has been reached, that the power went out, or that the battery backup is low.

  • Telaid IP Tattletale (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Finni ( 23475 ) on Wednesday April 30, 2003 @01:26PM (#5844668)
    <commercial = on>

    I'll have to speak up for our own product here. The IP Tattletale family [telaid.com] is a sysadmin-friendly set of devices for exactly this, and more. The original Tattletale, still sold, is a POTS-line based product with a Central Station contract. This one will fit your needs much better.

    It can spit out everything via SNMP; with an add-on license you can even use the device itself to aggregate other SNMP-based devices. For large-scale environments, you can roll your own MRTG or RRDtool configs, or you can buy the IP Tattletale Central, which is a 1U linux box that hold historical data and can push out threshold settings and configs to many Tattletale units.

    </commercial>

  • Yeah, Right. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    we are in the process of starting to Do Things Right(tm)

    Yeah, right. That's why you decided to Ask Slashdot for some bastardized, hacked up, freebie solution. Give me a break.

    If you want to handle environmental monitoring and control, and "do it right", then you should be talking to these guys [johnsoncontrols.com] about stuff like this [johnsoncontrols.com] and this [johnsoncontrols.com] and this [johnsoncontrols.com].
  • The ones linked in the main article text output actual analog or digital signals - you would still need something to bring this down to serial format to feed it into a machine (like a little basic stamp circuit or something)

    You might want to look at Pinnacle Datalogger [www.pinnaclet.com], which has an ethernet jack and an IP stack, and a web interface, etc... It does temp and humidity.

  • NAGIOS [nagios.org] is an opensource network monitoring system, they have some links on their site for ethernet connected temperature probe devices [nagios.org].
  • I recommend putting trays of popcorn on top of each rack-mount server. You can spot which ones are too hot almost immediately and get some needed brain food during the subsequent troubleshooting. The unbeatable feature of this monitoring method is the use of high-reliability redundant data paths. Visual, aural, and olfactory transmission methods are all employed to their fullest advantage.
  • Seriously, get an EE intern. I had to build simple systems like this in college using a National Instruments interface board and some basic thermostats, humidistats, and even digital photo-eyes. You can write a simple LabView program to read in the data and output it to a database. Total cost would be ~$500 in hardware (assuming you have a server somewhere that has a spare parallel/com port in the room). You can place the devices anywhere in the room and run the wires back to the interface board. You c

  • Omega Engineering (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Xenu ( 21845 ) on Wednesday April 30, 2003 @03:51PM (#5846482)
    Check this page [omega.com] for a cheap ($59), battery operated data logger that records temperature and relative humidity. Stick them whereever you want to collect information. There is a simple Windows program for downloading measurements and configuring the devices over a serial interface.

    I have one at home and it works great.

  • I will make you one cheap(about $100) And as a side benefit you can control an Etch-A-Sketch [gadgeteer.org] with it. But seriously the Rabbit semiconductor core modules [rabbitsemiconductor.com] are very cool. For $40 you get an ethernet port with a free (beer not speech) TCP/IP stack, 4 serial ports and 8 general purpose I/O's
  • Just saw this advertised in a magazine at lunch:

    Weather Duck [itwatchdogs.com].

    It needs a PC to run its software but seems to fit your bill, especially SNMP for MRTG. I would imagine any old junky PC would be just fine.
  • Check out iButtons, at least for temperature
    monitoring.
  • You should also have fire suppression and liquid detection systems. The liquid detection systems are pretty cool. A sensor cable runs all around the floor and zones are mapped on the wall. If you get a leak under the floor (from the chillers, for example) you get an alarm and the panel indicates the zone where you need to start pulling tiles.

  • for me (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    for me I use a APC Enviornmental card which is plugged into my smart UPS 1000, hooked up to my system via NUT [exploits.org], I then use a perl script [aphroland.de] to extract the data and send it to mrtg. the same script connects to weather.com and grabs the local weather as well, see the sample [aphroland.org]. this monitors just my living room, I don't have a job at the moment so I don't have an official server room, just a living room with about 20 systems.
  • Why do you have people in the same room with servers?

    How are you restricting access to your computer room?

    Why are you not getting in touch with professional people?
    • space? money? The setup works well, you have your servers within arms reach, your IT people are there too. We have something like that at my school, a room thats always got the thermostat set to -500 calvin and all the servers in a row, along with two desks for the administrator and IT director. People don't comming there -- and when they forget their password (or anything of that nature) they have to, you would think that this would lead to less of these cases.

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