DATA centres are one of the most energy-intensive building types, consuming up to 50 times the energy per floor space of a typical commercial office building.
With organisations embracing advanced technologies, data centres powering these technologies are under increasing pressure around the globe to constantly increase capacities and improve efficiencies.
Greater loads on data centre racks create higher pressure on power and environmental infrastructures. Faster, hotter chips, larger servers, cluster networks, storage and rising densities are putting increasing demands on data centre infrastructure and designs.
Legrand specialists emphasise that as the use of information technology grows, data centre and server energy usage also increases. Although many efficiency strategies are successfully employed in data centres – including predictive analytics and data-driven machine learning – these critical facilities require improved levels of intelligence to provide a complete picture of data centre conditions at the rack, aisle and facility levels.
Advanced tools – like intelligent environmental sensors – are designed to survey critical resources accurately and in real time, alerting operators to potential threats. Sensors provide important information, for example, if there is sufficient power, a harmful hotspot, wasteful overcooling, or if there is an unauthorised user near an open cabinet.
Monitoring tools are used to advise if there is evidence of harmful environmental hazards and how new workloads could be affecting specific cabinets.
Monitoring tools and sensors enhance efficiencies
In the past, monitoring and management was done manually, which was time-consuming and often unreliable. Outdated sensors and systems had little interoperability with existing rack infrastructure, putting greater demand on management.
Legrand SmartSensors have been developed to create an intelligent data centre infrastructure platform, enabling a proactive environment. These advanced sensors are designed to work with the existing infrastructure and can be installed without having to halt operations. When looking at a data centre sensor instrumentation project, optimising the total cost of ownership is essential.
Legrand’s environmental sensors form part of a dependable intelligent solution in data centre operations and can be deployed as plug-and-play options with intelligent rack PDUs, inline meters, branch circuit monitors and other rack management solutions, eliminating the need for a separate controller and underlying networking.
Legrand’s SmartSensor technology, which uses advanced metering components to provide more accurate and valuable data, automatically sends environmental data to DCIM software solutions, revealing real-time environment data and trends, along with other infrastructure metrics, like power capacity and power quality.
To increase operational efficiency and maintain higher service levels in data centres, it is important to monitor critical environmental variables like cooling conditions, temperature, humidity, power and rack conditions.
Sensor deployment
Best monitoring practices have been developed to reduce downtime and improve efficiency in critical operating environments. Every watt of power consumed by IT equipment is turned into a watt of heat and as computer loads fluctuate, so do temperatures. That’s why real-time, accurate monitoring of cabinet temperatures is a top priority.
Maintaining proper humidity levels helps avoid electrostatic discharge (ESD) problems when humidity is low and condensation problems when humidity is high.
Aisle environmental control involves temperature, humidity, airflow and hot/cold aisle monitoring.
Tracking the temperature ranges in aisles assists in identifying problems quickly to improve efficiency.
Specialists also recommend the installation of sensors to protect equipment from excessive vibration and shock.
Airborne particles and dust deposits – such as organic dust, concrete dust, ferrous metal particles and electrostatic dust – are an invisible threat to data centres, server rooms and other areas where IT equipment is installed. Although not naturally harmful to IT equipment, these ultrafine particles can build up and interfere with a device’s normal functioning levels, leading to a short circuit. A dust/particle sensor monitors particle levels and indicates whether levels are above or below custom thresholds.
The installation of water/leak sensors on the outside walls of the server room and beneath a raised floor is recommended to detect water and coolant leaks.
Sensors also play an important role as security systems, by alerting security personnel of unauthorised access to a cabinet. Some systems are designed to activate a camera system that points to the exact rack that has been accessed, while proximity sensors capture when someone passes near a cabinet.
Selection of the correct sensors
Legrand specialists offer advice on which monitoring devices are best suited for each environment. Firstly, it is important to look for scalable solutions and to design a system that will easily accommodate changing requirements. A suitable sensor and environmental monitoring platform should integrate into the overall management platform, providing visibility and granular control.
