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Server Room Temp Monitoring and Notifications?

Posted by Cliff on from the don't-let-it-get-too-hot-in-thar dept.

Supp0rtLinux asks: "Like many businesses, my server room is a standalone environment from the rest of my building. It has its own UPS, its own survelliance system, and its own AC system powered by its own generator. These are separate from the global building UPS, survelliance, AC, and generator systems and are designed to operate even when the rest of the building is down. However, in my current server room and in others I work with, I find that the AC systems generally lack a network-based notification system. As such, while my server room AC failed at 2am last night and temperature climbed to over 98 degrees, no one was aware until after 8am this morning when the audible alarms were heard. How do other Slashdot readers handle this?" "I've thought about using some server motherboard with thermal monitoring, but they typically: a) only allow for shutdown at a certain temp, not for warning/email; and b) a well cooled server may not necessarily become excessively hot even if the room heats up. I know some newer AC systems *do* support SMTP notifications, but older ones either do not or are cost-prohibitive add-ons. The very popular Lieberts that are found in the ceilings of many server rooms are a good example of this. Do you know of devices that are network/SMTP capable that can be set with thresholds and alarms and generate emails, pages, or SMS messages when said alarms go off?"

15 of 93 comments (clear)

  1. Here you go by A+nonymous+Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Hot Little Therm but see the warning about no longer selling them ... great thermo probes, wish they were still selling them. I am glad I have a few extra.

    Weather Duck and Power Egg

    These ought to do the trick just fine. A bit of configuring or shell scripting, send email to a cell phone or pager or whatever, you should be happy as a clam at high tide.

    There are probably others as well. There may even be source code on sourceforge. Hot Little Therm has software. Weather Duck may also.

    --
    Infuriate left and right
  2. Nagios + Websensor by asc4 · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://www.nagios.org/products/environmental/esens ors/em01b.php

    Doesn't get any easier.

    1. Re:Nagios + Websensor by ComputerSlicer23 · · Score: 2, Informative
      I want to second this. We do this, and we also pay the alarm people to monitor the temp and humidity as a backup (about are only problem is that, they didn't call use during business hours because they assumed we knew the room was 15F over the agreed upon high temp). Yes, it's a server room, no one works in there, no one goes in there unless there's a problem or to rotate tapes. Ding bats...

      Nagios is wonderful. Everytime we have a new type of error, we write a little script to monitor how fast we are approaching that situation and alert, or we write a script to at least alert when it happens, so Nagios will diagnose the problem nearly immediatly if it's not something you can get early warning on (software mirrors breaking for example).

      Monitoring for when crond dies, running out of file descriptors, mirrors breaking, and various other problems we've had over time have been scripted up because there wasn't a plugin for it.

      Kirby

    2. Re:Nagios + Websensor by TTK+Ciar · · Score: 2, Informative

      I second this, too. We use Nagios at The Internet Archive, and a trivial Nagios plugin wrapped around /usr/sbin/hddtemp which can be used to monitor the temperature of your servers' hard drives.

      Nagios can be made to do any of a variety of things when a plugin returns a "CRITICAL" status, like send emails, call beepers/cellphones, etc.

      -- TTK

  3. Thermal Cube + Nagios by saintp · · Score: 4, Informative

    Build yourself a couple of Thermal Cubes ($3.50 - $5.00 each), and connect them to a box running Nagios (which you should be running anyway). Hey presto, temperature monitoring. And you get to play with soldering irons at work, which can be great fun if you act secretive and mutter about overclocking.

    --
    Another one bites the dust
  4. an real-world appliance by wwest4 · · Score: 2, Informative

    I bought a black box that detects power, humidity, and temperature changes and calls me. It's programmable by DTMF, it's cheap, and you can tweak the threshold parameters to your heart's content. The ones I use were purchased from Microtechnologies, Inc. in CT. It woke me up after a bunch of power outages last night. Some might prefer something more exotic or flexible, but this is quick, dirty, and it works (4+ years).

  5. NetBotz by hab136 · · Score: 2, Informative

    http://www.netbotz.com/.

  6. Sensaphone by MikeDawg · · Score: 2, Informative

    We use a Sensaphone 1104 (my boss is a real geek). It will dial phone numbers, send pages if certain conditions are met regarding the server room. Sensaphone offers many more products that do similiar tasks.

    --

    YOU'RE WINNER !
    Another lame blog

  7. Alarm Companies by Some+guy+named+Chris · · Score: 3, Informative

    Alarm companies will sell you a monitored service to do just what you want.

    That's what we use.

  8. Digitemp rocks by the_maddman · · Score: 2, Informative
    I use a combo of digitemp, Dallas One-Wire temp probes, RRD, and some Python to glue it together.
    http://www.digitemp.com/ for the software,
    http://www.ibuttonlink.com/ to get the hardware.

    Serial interface, and you can run sensors hundreds of feet away over cat5. Just remember to test the alerts if you roll your own system.

    If you want to know more, let me know I'll see what I can do.

  9. Temperature Monitors by Gigabit+Switchman · · Score: 2, Informative

    My company (Disclaimer: I am an engineer, not a sales guy) makes products designed jsut for this! Ethernet-based (or serial-port based) and work with MANY software options including Nagios, or we have a perl script for data collection that you could hack to send you email if you like do-it-yourself. Here's the device I recommend. There are some homebrew-ish solutions out there, but we sell to thousands of very happy customers, and provide everything from the basics to lots of bells and whistles. SMS messages are the most commonly used notification method, though a few prefer pagers. Hey, you can even contact one of the engineers directly for tech support. ;-)

  10. Environmental monitoring by mknewman · · Score: 2, Informative

    APC sells a monitoring board that goes in some of their UPSses and will do SNMP. Even if you don't need a UPS get one, hook it to your network, and you have your monitor cheaply. Marc

  11. APC Environmental Management System by kashou · · Score: 2, Informative

    Why reinvent the wheel? --kash

  12. APC by un4given · · Score: 2, Informative

    APC makes an inexpensive but very effective monitoring device:

    http://www.apc.com/resource/include/techspec_index .cfm?base_sku=AP9319

    I have installed these at multiple sites with great sucess. They do email or SNMP notifications and are manageable through a web interface.

  13. APC Environmental monitoring and MRTG by darkone · · Score: 2, Informative

    I use an internal APC environmental monitoring card, which costs about $150. There is an external version for about $250 USD. http://www.apc.com/products/category.cfm?id=7&subi d=29

    I am using the internal card in an APC MasterSwitch, which allows me to control the power, and SNMP/web monitor the temperature (and create MRTG graphs). I also have a script which watches the temp and pages me at x degrees.

    --
    -=Down Syndrome in Maine