Server Room Monitoring through APC

 

As networking equipment and servers become more powerful, and costs begin to rise on their support contracts, the environment is usually the last item that is budgeted for. Today, small businesses utilize spare closets, medium businesses may have a dedicated equipment room, and larger corporations will have a custom built data room. As we safeguard our investments against file viruses, email spam, and internet hackers, we have seen in our experience, that the actual monitoring of the network room, is usually sub-par.

Although you don’t need to have an entire Cloud System in your office or a VMWare infrastructure running a server farm, most company’s will have an Active Directory Domain Controller, Email Server, and possible a dedicated File Server. While we pour resources and funds into the server management aspect to ensure we can work, and communicate, we sometimes don’t stop and realize the very basic health of the room:

(1) Multiple extension cords, surge strips, overloaded electrical outlets.

(2) Servers and Network Equipment dispense great amounts of heat that need an escape.

(3) Do we really know how much time is left on the batteries (if any at all).

Utilizing the best equipment, requires the best monitoring to ensure that your systems stay online without downtime. When installing any of the different models of APC Symetra units (Batteries, KV Power Modules, Environmental Modules), they each perform a different function and safeguard. The batteries allow the run-time to increase if you lose electrical connectivity in the building, the Power Modules increase the load capability of the unit, and the Environmental Modules monitor temperature and humidity in the room.

By accessing the web based interface of the APC/UPS Network Management Card that installed in the unit, you have a dashboard of the health of the environment at your fingertips. You can instantly see the Equipment Load, Battery Run-time, Temperature and a slew of other usual monitoring. The application allows you to setup multiple server monitoring, graceful shutdown thresholds, and the most important feature is EMAIL notification or SNMP alerting. If the device switches to battery, you are notified; if it gets too hot; you are notified. Data can be damaged if servers just power off. Equipment can be damaged if the AC unit fails or overheats.

As equipment is an investment, so should the proactive monitoring.

For a walk-through of our new data center, feel free to contact us at AMRCON, and we can schedule a meeting.