Appendix A: Terminology

You are going to come up against a bit of terminology in this Buyer’s Guide so you may as well know exactly what it all means. If you are experienced in the field, you may want to skip forward, I doubt there’ll be anything new for you here.

Environment monitor

A system for monitoring the environment in a building. Typically the monitoring system runs 24/7/365 in areas of a building that are sensitive to heat, like a server room.

An environment monitor can be very simple, measuring temperature in one location or very complex, measuring multiple environmental values in many locations.

Temperature monitor

An environment monitor restricted solely to monitoring temperature.

Probe

Probes are the mechanism by which the monitor measures its environment.

Probes of various types are available, including temperature, relative humidity, wetness, door contact and dry contact.

Some probes are built  into the environment monitor, in the case of the Senturion. Most probes are external and attach to the environment monitor.

Probes are supplied in a variety of lengths to give you maximum flexibility in where you place your monitor.

Sensor

See environment monitor.

SNMP

Taken from the SNMP entry at Wikipedia:

“The Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) forms part of the internet protocol suite as defined by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). SNMP is used in network management systems to monitor network-attached devices for conditions that warrant administrative attention. It consists of a set of standardsApplication Layer protocol, a database schema, and a set of data objects.”

SNMP provides a mechanism for reading network related instrumentation from any supporting device irrespective of manufacturer.

Network management

Taken from the network management entry at Wikipedia:

“Network management refers to the activities, methods, procedures, and tools that pertain to the operation, administration, maintenance, and provisioning of networked systems.”

The term network management has become a little corrupted. It is often used as short hand to refer to network & system monitoring.

A network management system is a tool to help you manage your network. It can range from a very simple router link trending point tool all the way up to Big 4 enterprise level management platform.

Data centre

Taken from the data center entry at Wikipedia:

“A data center is a facility used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage systems.”

Server room

Taken from the server room entry at Wikipedia:

“Server room is the name of a room, where mostly computer servers are housed. In Information Technology circles the term server room, is generally used for smaller setups. As the number of computer servers grow, they may be housed in data centers.”

Computer room

See data centre.