Why monitor server room temperature?

Server temperature monitoring is an essential practice to ensure conditions are in check. Within every online business there is the need for a server. Without a server a business cannot be interconnected and function as it is required to. Anyone that has experienced temporary downtime of servers during work hours will know how much of an obstacle it can cause to business functionality. Even a 15-minute downtime period is a massive spanner in the works and can stop many people from being able to do large parts of their jobs, even in some cases their job entirely, with no access to necessary files and more. Therefore, preventing disruption is of course a great priority- with the conditions the server system is kept in being one big factor to consider. This starts with your server room, as this is used to store, power and operate the computer servers and their accompanying components. One critical aspect of server room conditions to consider and the one we are going to talk about, is the temperature and humidity of the server room.

Server rooms/ data centres comprise of a combination of both hot and cool air, this is due to server fans producing hot air, while air conditioning and other cooling systems yield cool air to counteract this. Balancing the server room temperature is a high priority when ensuring server room uptime. Conditions reaching excess levels of heat runs the risk of equipment failure. As previously mentioned, downtime can mean lost data, productivity and revenue. The ASHRAE (American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers) recommend temperature conditions for server rooms should be between 18°C-27°C. Anything higher or lower than this should be an immediate cause for concern as it could lead to system failure.

Relative humidity is the other factor to consider. ASHRAE’s guidelines suggest the ideal rH is 50% for optimal performance. They also suggest minimum rH levels of 20%, and a maximum humidity of 80% to avoid system failure.

Setting up a server room temperature monitoring system is essential to ensure conditions are in check. Data loggers that provide alerts are the perfect solution to minimise risk and provide reassurance. Programming alerts for early warning thresholds should be put in place. We’d suggest setting up early alert triggers, for when temperature thresholds reach 19.5°C and 25.5°C, and 40% and 60% relative humidity. Critical alerts should be sent if temperatures reach 18.5 or 26.5°C and if relative humidity reaches either 30% or 70% meaning the problem can be solved before the equipment is affected.

Our solutions

Withnell Sensors are temperature & humidity specialists; we have a number of potential solutions for server temperature monitoring. For example, the SenseAnywhere range are perfect for server room temperature monitoring. The data logger system feeds data to the cloud and can be accessed from any smart device. The biggest benefit of this is that you can check the conditions 24/7 from anywhere in the world. Alerts will be sent to your connected smart devices meaning if you are in the next room or in the Bahamas you will still be informed of any issues and be able to resolve before any costly failures occur. The system can be set up in minutes. With the SenseAnywhere system you can connect multiple loggers to the AccessPoint to specify the conditons of specific areas of the room or server racking. This video shows you how easy it is to set up!

Contact us today for anymore information- we offer independent advice and expert support.