Environmental Monitoring: Catch Equipment Failure Before it Strikes

The Causes of Downtime

Did you know that one of the most common causes of downtime is hardware failure? In fact, these failures are often caused by exceeded temperature or humidity levels within the cabinet.

That's why it’s an industry best practice (recommended by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers, or ASHRAE) for data centers to maintain appropriate temperature levels within their white spaces.

A Closer Look at ASHRAE 2015 Thermal Guidelines

IT equipment of all classes should be maintained within a temperature range of 64.4–80.6°F (18 – 27°C) and relative humidity within the range of 40 – 60%. Also, the difference between inlet and outlet temperature should be within 35°F (20°C) and should not change more than 9°F (5°C) in any 15-minute period.

The question at hand: How does your data center manage and respond to these industry standards while also meeting the demand for better equipment performance?

How to Optimize Your Cabinet Ecosystem

It’s important to measure the inlet temperature, outlet temperature, and inlet humidity at each rack and/or cabinet in order to ensure that conditions are within ASHRAE recommended limits. Do this by placing a temperature and humidity probe near the top front and rear of each cabinet.

When you're ready to optimize the environmental monitoring in your cabinet ecosystem even further, consider the following:

• Remote temperature and humidity monitoring

  • Inlet and outlet temperature and inlet humidity all need to be monitored to ensure that conditions are within ASHRAE-recommended ranges, equipment specifications and site requirements.

• Integration with a power distribution unit (PDU)

  • Temperature and humidity data can be collected through a PDU network connection and interface.

• Upper and lower thresholds and data logging

  • The ability to set an upper and lower threshold for temperature and humidity that prompts an automated alarm to technicians if conditions approach a limit is essential. This also allows you to define parameters for your site based on operating conditions, and will log any out of bounds conditions for record keeping and analysis.

• Integration with Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) software

  • The ability to trend and plot temperature and humidity conditions can help visualize patterns and identify the root cause of out of bounds conditions. This helps operators recognize the need to move a workload or a piece of equipment to another rack or indicates that airflow management is deficient in a particular rack.

Download the white paper featured below to learn more about how you can optimize your data center's levels of efficiency remotely, with the guaranteed performance of your equipment:

Contact your local Accu-Tech Representative to learn more information about Chatsworth Products, or visit their vendor page here.