What temperature is right for server rooms?

It is generally recommended that the temperature should not fall below 50°F (or 10°C) or above 84°F (or 29°C).  The temperature is most commonly kept between 68-71°F. 

Monitoring Server Room Temperature

As most IT administrators know, servers and other network equipment are designed to operate in a cool environment.  If for any reason the temperature continues to rise at a certain point, the maximum operating temperature could be exceeded for critical equipment in a server room or data center within hours.  

If an administrator fails to respond to certain conditions due to lack of a simple alert, the added heat caused by the servers' operation can result in a disastrous meltdown, causing system downtime (or angry customers and inactive sales force), high replacement costs, and a lot of man hours in reloading the application software, rewriting router tables and feeding CD's into replacement machines for weeks.

There could be various reasons or activities that may result temperature to rise in a server room.  The most common reason seems to be air conditioner failure.  

It is very tragic to hear about such server room meltdowns where the IT Administrator had no idea of the unusual temperature increase as the solution to prevent this is simple:

IT Watchdogs provides low-cost server room/data center monitors that log temperature, humidity (to prevent corrosion), light, sound level, voltage, etc. and send out an alert when measures fall above or below the set threshold.  The data can be accessed over a web browser anywhere in the world.  The web user interface is highly secure and allows the administrator(s) to remotely turn the server on or off.  If for any reason an administrator cannot get to the server room or data center in time, he/she has the capability to turn the equipment off in order to prevent it from ruining.  

We'll soon talk more about monitoring humidity, light, sound levels, etc.

This material is derived from  Server Room Climate & Power Monitoring  and is copyrighted by IT Watchdogs, Inc.
Visit www.itwatchdogs.com to request a free copy of the book.

Server Room Monitoring Techniques

Protecting existing server rooms is difficult because most legacy server rooms are dissimilar and the threats are multiple.  One tried-and-true configuration may not work in another server room.  In the blogs to come, we will focus on a variety of methods and devices (manufactured by ITWatchdogs) to monitor server rooms in order to prevent damage and system down-time.

We will cover the five fundamental threats for system down-time:

• Heat (internal and/or external)
• Water
• Fire (or smoke)
• Power Failure
• Intrusion

This material is derived from Gerard Cullen's Server Room Climate & Power Monitoring book and is copyrighted by IT Watchdogs, Inc.  Visit www.itwatchdogs.com to request a free copy.