How to Monitor Physical Threats in the Data Center

Today’s common techniques for monitoring the comms room or data centre environment date from the days of centralised mainframes, and include such practices as walking around with thermometers and relying on IT personnel to “feel” the environment of the room. But as comms rooms and data centres continue to evolve with distributed processing and server technologies that are driving up power and cooling demands, the environment must be looked at more closely. Traditional methodologies for monitoring the data centre environment are no longer sufficient.

While well understood protocols exist for monitoring physical devices in the comms room or data centre such as UPS systems, computer room air conditioners, and fire suppression systems, there is a class of distributed monitoring points that is often ignored.

Monitoring of equipment is not enough – the surrounding environment must be viewed holistically and watched proactively for threats and intrusions. Such threats include excessive server intake temperatures, water leaks, and unauthorized human access to the data center or inappropriate actions by personnel in the data center.

Remote network locations such as branch offices, network closets, and local point-of-sale locations further highlight the need for automated monitoring, where it is impractical and unreliable to have people physically present to check conditions such as temperature and humidity. With the introduction of unmanned network outposts, IT administrators must have reliable systems in place to know what is going on.

Physical threats to IT equipment include such things as power and cooling problems, human error or malice, fire, leaks, and air quality, temperature and humidity.

APC by Schneider Electric’s range of Netbotz environmental monitoring is designed to protect your IT infrastructure against environmental threats and unauthorised access risks that can cause unexpected downtime.

Various types of sensors can be used to provide early warning of trouble from the threats described above. While the specific type and number of sensors may vary depending upon budget, threat risk, and the business cost of a breach, there is a minimum essential set of sensors that makes sense for most data centres.