Server room temp monitor

leigh_boy · 20 Dec 2012 at 15:05

Got a bit of an issue
had a power cut, didnt know about it , air con had turned off.
servers are boiling hot as is the room.

what i want is a solution so that i can tell if the air con is of.

is there such a thing as a temp sensor that i can get to email me if the temp rises higher then xx degrees

SMN · 20 Dec 2012 at 15:19

You would be best getting an SNMP enabled temp monitor and then using something smart like Nagios, Opsview Core, etc to monitor the sensor and email you, etc.

#Chri5# · 20 Dec 2012 at 15:37

The Climate is self contained and can e-mail alerts.

sidethink · 20 Dec 2012 at 15:37

www.theclimate.co.uk

leigh_boy · 20 Dec 2012 at 16:01

cheers im looking for something cheap as our servers are just for local use and not for our main servers in the US

this should do the job on its own ?
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/NEW-Digi-...921?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4d01123ba1

http://www.digi.com/pdf/prd_vs_watchportsensors.pdf

blastman · 20 Dec 2012 at 16:19

APC do a load of cheap(ish) products for room monitoring.

netboltz 150 would see you ok for less than £150.

You can also add a relay to your AC pump, so if the pump fails (or if there's a power cut and the power is lost to the pump) it triggers, this can be plugged into the netboltz and you'll get instant email notification.

You could go step further and install nagios as suggested above and check everything for free!

just remember to power your monitoring systems via ups. there's no point having it to tell you if the powers gone if it'll die if it does!

good luck!

Hulkster · 20 Dec 2012 at 16:34

Another very useful tip for this sort of thing is to monitor the Ambient Temperature SNMP value of one or more servers in your server room. After a few days you will know what is "normal" and can set the alert thresholds accordingly. It may not be wildly accurate but it is certainly going to generate an alert if the air con fails since the temps will rocket.

Of course this is only much use if you already have something doing the monitoring. If you don't and want a quick solution, check out the free edition of PRTG, or, if you want a bit more of a challenge, try Nagios.

kefkef · 20 Dec 2012 at 23:36

Have a word with your air-con folk. We had a few issues where air-con didn't come back on after a power trip, had the controllers moved to a different type, not an expensive job for the one's we had and now they just start back up when the power comes back on.

Also agree with the two suggestions above, APC stuff is good all the way through the range, I do like the climates though, have them in all our rooms along with UPS room sensors too.

kefkef · 20 Dec 2012 at 23:37

Oh yeah, make sure your aircon isn't running at the lowest temp, don't set it at 16-18c, set it around 23-25c, means your compressor units should last longer!

MartynB85 · 20 Dec 2012 at 23:43

We had a similar issue at work a while ago, but the ac guys turned off the ac for the server room lol. Luckily I'd put a netbotz in there a few years before, and it emailed us with a temperature warning. We'd got it sorted before our servers shut themselves down. Our netbotz have cameras too, and mics so we can spy on anyone working in the server room

K@rl · 21 Dec 2012 at 09:50

If you really want to do it on the cheap - how about a USB temp sensor from the ebay. Some come with trailing leads that you can run into a location thats not effected by the server exhaust.