Wetness Monitoring - Why bother?

Wetness monitoring is the Cinderella of the monitoring world. It never fails to amaze me how few people deploy any kind of effective wetness monitoring, and how many have had experience of floods and leaking pipes in their server room.

Wetness Monitoring

Most network and facilities managers are aware of the importance of temperature monitoring and there are many well documented horror stories relating to temperature problems, but wetness monitoring is rarely considered a priority.

I have yet to meet a cable installer who has not had experience of pulling up an inspection panel to find cables swimming in water. Wetness monitoring is just about the easiest type of monitoring to install, just buy a probe and lay it on the floor where water is likely to gather. A perfect example of fit it and forget it technology.

Server Rooms

You don’t have to be a technological genius to know that Servers and water do not mix, and yet most server rooms have overhead air conditioning units that drip water when they fail. Many smaller aircon units use simple pumps based on a flexible tube squeezed by a rotating cam. It’s only a matter of time until the tube fractures and begins to leak. If the leak happens to be above your server rack you are going to have a big problem on your hands. Andrew Orlowski from The Register has an interesting piece entitled The world’s most dangerous server room?. Routine maintenance can help avoid this, but failures are usually catastrophic and water leaks are common.

Raised Floors

Many purpose built server rooms and data centers have raised floors to accommodate cables and for cooling purposes. However if there is a water leak in the room it isn’t always apparent until floor panels are lifted and a visual inspection made. This appears to be a remarkably common problem.

Flooding, caused by heavy rainfall, burst drains or even a leaking roof is another possibility.

You should position wetness probes at the lowest point in the room and underneath air conditioning units, or indeed anywhere you suspect a leak may be possible.

Conclusion

Wetness Monitoring is as important as temperature and humidity monitoring in server rooms and data centers. Leaks and liquid spills should be considered carefully when you are planning your monitoring requirements. The cost of a few wetness probes, connected to suitable alerting software, is a small price to pay for the comfort of knowing that you are protecting vital equipment from an early (and damp) grave.

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