Articles

The various aspects that make up server room monitoring make it a fascinating topic in its own right. Apart from the obvious environmental monitoring concerns there is also physical access control and monitoring, as well as infrastructure monitoring to consider.

Is this the year you finally get around to implementing a comprehensive monitoring plan for your data centre? Odds are you’re at least considering it. Data centre monitoring can give you an accurate real-time snapshot depicting the current state of your enterprise’s critical infrastructure and, in the process, help you save money and avert disaster.

The subject of data center temperature monitoring is something that should be on the mind of every IT manager and chief information officer as energy consumption can become a significant expense to any organisation. But according to new ASHRAE standards and specifications, a rise in temperature may actually reduce energy consumption.

How can data centre administrators start making the right decisions in terms of temperature and humidity? Where should the appropriate limits be set? What technologies are available to tackle these issues?

A breakdown of the status factors to measure and record for each Computer Room Air Conditioner (CRAC) unit in your computer room, data centre or server room. The paper also gives a justification for why you should record each status factor and what you should do with the information once you've recorded it.

An outline of the various options you have when you are choosing a server room thermometer including the pros and cons of each

A quick guide to troubleshooting telephone faults with a break down of the systematic approach required as well as cable testing and telephone testing equipment that would prove useful.

An introduction to ethernet thermometers giving an overview of their uses as well as their advantages and disadvantages.

The creation of "server farms" comprising hundreds of individual file servers has become quite commonplace in the new e-commerce economy, while other businesses spawn farms by moving equipment previously in closets or under desktops into a centralized data center environment. However, many of these farms are hastily planned and implemented as the needed equipment must be quickly installed on a rush schedule. The typical result is a somewhat haphazard layout on the raised floor that can have disastrous consequences due to environment temperature disparities. Unfortunatley, this lack of floor-layout planning is not apparent until after serious reliability problems have already occurred.

Network Managers need to be alerted to problems on the network at all times. But how to achieve this? Sending emails is the most common method used, but what if the user isn’t at their machine, or it’s not switched on? In certain circumstances alarm bells or lights work well. Third party monitoring companies are excellent, give 24/7 coverage but are very expensive. Is there an alternative, cheap, reliable method of receiving alerts?

Big Brother is a network monitor that uses a client-server architecture combined with methods which both push and pull data to monitor System and Network-delivered services for availability in real time. It gathers information from agents on your system and performs tests against the system being monitored. This data is then passed upstream to a central location where your current network status is displayed on a color-coded web page in near-real time, red for failure, green for fine. When problems are detected, you can be notified by e-mail, pager, or text messaging.

Whether working in health, pharmaceuticals, financial or any other organisation, facilities managers are increasingly required to have strategies in place for business continuity. And it’s no surprise that IT and telecommunications failure, as the blood flow and nerves of a business, remain the top cause of disruption to business continuity, according to a survey of UK business managers by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI).

An introduction to material emissivity and how it affects measurement using an infrared thermometer or radiation thermometer.

The Intellipool Network Monitor (INM) is an easy to use and feature rich web based network monitor that enables you to monitor, report, and alert errors on your servers, routers and workstations 24/7.

IPSentry is an Internet tool, first developed in 1996 that will continually monitor all your Internet and intranet TCP/IP network servers 24/7, ensuring your email servers, Web sites, FTP servers, news servers, and any other TCP/IP-based services are active and responding.

An outline of the causes of network cable data loss and why gigabit cabling is more of a challenge than cables running at lower speeds.

An exploration of who perpetrates network security attacks and what are their motivations.

An exploration of the reasons why you should be interested in network configuration management. An outline is also presented of the available tools.

How you can have the network management tools you want everywhere you need them without breaking the bank.

Beyond a certain size networks become difficult to visualize without graphical aids. There are a number of tools to aid in the production of network maps. This article provides reasons why you should be interested in network mapping, as well as an overview of the available tools.

Network simulation is a much underestimated tool in the network manager’s arsenal. When used properly they can help take some of the guesswork out of network planning.

An outline of the pros and cons of using open source tools for network management.

The following is an excerpt from a reply by Robert G. Brown, Duke University first posted on www.beowulf.org. Just how crucial adequate air conditioning is, the relative costs, and the fall-out he experienced for months after an AC failure is clearly illustrated.

Validator is a new kind of network tester that uses advanced digital signal generation to measure the actual noise levels on cable runs. The result is that Validator actually proves that the cable will transmit error free data at the specified rate.

An exploration of the security weaknesses of the Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP).

The Environmental Monitor EM1 addresses wetness monitoring in a more sophisticated way than most wetness monitoring products. The Sensatronics range of probes do not just alarm on wet or not wet conditions, rather there is a wetness scale from 1 to 100, representing different levels of ’wetness’. The scale is an arbitrary one and may vary slightly from one probe to another but it is none the less useful as a guide to the degree of wetness. Setting a level too high may result in false alarms if humidity is high, so typically a value of around 40 would be used to trigger an alert.

Wireless Networking, WiFi, is not a new technology, but it is only recently that it has become mainstream. What are the benefits of wireless networks and should you be considering using it?

A discussion of wireless network security and how it differs from the security required for a traditional wire based network.

An exploration of the reasons why WPA provides stronger wireless security than WEP in your wireless network

A Protocol Analyzer is today considered an essential part of the Network Manager’s toolkit. The traditional view is that analyzers are useful for troubleshooting networks while SNMP tools are better for trending and service management. This document asks if a Protocol Analyzer has a role to play in the day to day management of a network?

Stable environmental conditions are vital to reliable operation of your data center. This article explains the areas that you should be concerned about and provides best practice guidelines.

An exploration of the security levels of wireless networks in and around Leeds, West Yorkshire, England.