there are many options to check the temperature.. we use couple of them... one is HP blade system, you monitor the temprature using web interface. and the other one is AMC
We use AKCP securityprobe. It has 8 intelligent ports, each one can drive 8 temp probes or 1 of other interesting probes (humidity, flood, AC detect, airflow). It even has a bunch of dry ports to detect open doors, or whatever you imagine in a on/off behaviour. Our model can drive 4 vga cameras with pan & tilt control, but there are cheaper models without this feature.
The strong points are the price and the web interface. Also we like how alerts and notification channels are implemented. There is another strong point: you can add more than 70 snmp probes from your ilos, pdu's and the like. All is inside a neat box with linux on it where you can add, if you want, the open source of your choice. It comes with Nagios inside as an extra, if you want to integrate it with your control room. It not seems so difficult to cross-compile anything you need. People at AKCP are very responsive.
There are new models that let you bulid a cascading puzzle for your easy of resizing.
A word of caution when using “In Server” temperature monitoring. These temperature sensors often do not measure the server air inlet temperature, but internal temperatures like CPU, RAM, Mother Board etc. these readings will often give misleading results. They will indicate that the temperatures inside the server are outside the DC operating range.
Marchen,
While there are many devices that have temperature probes, you have to consider this. If you put a probe inside of a rack, you are measuring at the closest part of a single device; and not necessarily the hotest part of that device. If all you want to do is, then a general probe on the output is a good choice.
The most usable method you should consider is a way to do ambient monitoring to monitor at a row level in the are of the racks you would like to monitor. For me, if a server is pumping out 110 degree air, I want to know how it impacts the racks around it.
Marchen,
While there are many devices that have temperature probes, you have to consider this. If you put a probe inside of a rack, you are measuring at the closest part of a single device; and not necessarily the hotest part of that device. If all you want to do is, then a general probe on the output is a good choice.
The most usable method you should consider is a way to do ambient monitoring to monitor at a row level in the are of the racks you would like to monitor. For me, if a server is pumping out 110 degree air, I want to know how it impacts the racks around it.
Keith
I don't understand your comment. If you are using a Hot-Aisle Cold-Aisle rack layout then the exhaust aisles will be hot. If they are not then you are not running your DC efficiently. Most servers have internal VSD fans which means that the exhaust temperature and inlet temperature are not related.
Can you please explain how knowing you have a hot exhaust will help?
Raid,
Not all datacenters have a proper extraction system. I also use the temp readings of my hot aisles to determine where more cooling is needed in my cold aisles; or where I should/should not add more equipment. If I have a temperature difference of 10 degreen between an area in a hot aisle and say 5 racks down in that same hot aisle, I usually have a decent indicator of oversubscribed cooling.
For example, I have a rack that is around 10 years old and has had 30ish 1U servers in it. We noticed a significant hot spot in that hot aisle during a heat wave. It turned out that there was a problem with a) not enough cooling in one of the cold aisles and b) a rebreathing issue in the other cold aisle.
I personally do not care about the exhaust temperature of a server unless I am trying to find a set of machines that is causing hot-spots. In that same regard, I do not really care about the temperature inside of a rack either.
Is there a way that we can measure the temperature remotely for any Rack?
Thanks,
Marchen
We are using APC environment monitoring units. Working very vell. Now starting to use first netbotz'es... VEry big problems, not the same quality as APC