When first asked to write an article for Equipment Protection Magazine, it seemed obvious to present a case as to why IT managers should monitor critical issues like temperature, power, humidity, flood, smoke, airflow and room entry. After all, AVTECH Software (AVTECH) helped pioneer some of the most popular IT environment monitoring solutions available and has been developing monitoring products for almost 20 years. These conditions, typically referred to as the "Big 7" (see pie chart), can easily bring any data center to a complete stop in minutes if problems arise. These IT environmental concerns are hot topics in any computer trade publication today and will remain so as computer rooms and data centers continue to change in design, form and function. Because power consumption is rising significantly as devices get smaller and more powerful, allowing users to cram more and more hardware into a single rack, they require significantly more energy to keep cool. If a problem does arise, it now impacts IT uptime and integrity in just minutes instead of hours or days like before the year 2000.

Leading research groups and related vendors estimate that threats from IT environment issues will cost business and industrial organizations somewhere between $50-$100 billion next year in downtime and related costs. I know some of you will think that the above seems overstated, especially if you manage a data center with reasonable reliability and have been able to avoid problems in the past. Well perhaps your organization is indeed one of the lucky few that did not experience a problem last year. Hopefully you can dodge the bullet again this year as well. Although why would you take on such risk when solutions are available that cost less per day than a cheap cup of coffee or just pennies an hour (see comparison table).

Last year, 23% of all data centers experienced downtime more than 5 times as a result of IT environment issues and 61% of the remaining data centers experienced downtime 1-4 times. If you're doing the math, that leaves only 16% of all data centers saying that environment issues did not impact IT uptime or reliability at their facility last year. If you're in that small percentage group, congratulations. However, the danger of statistics shows that you'll likely join the other 84% this year. The key question for you is how often will disaster strike and how much will it cost? No matter what downtime costs, it's too expensive and impacts more than just money. Perhaps this is a good time to consider implementing a proactive approach to monitoring IT environment issues.

Recent studies in the area of IT environment concerns and practices have lead Forester Research, one of the world's leading independent technology and market research companies, to state that it expects IT environment monitoring to become a $9 billion industry by the year 2010. They state that a reactive approach is not cost effective and incurs too much downtime- automation is the answer. The need for this technology is obvious and the benefits become highly apparent to IT managers the first time a problem is experienced.

Consider some related facts:

·  Given average power consumption in a data center, if cooling is lost, temperatures will rise from the industry standard of 68° F to over 85° F in approximately 8.6 minutes.

·  For every 18 degree rise in temperature above 68° F, servers lose approximately 50% of their reliability. **

·   The power consumption used by the typical data center rose 39% between 1999 and 2005. **

·  The average data center has 72% of their cooling capacity entirely bypassing computer equipment. **

·  Almost every major computer vendor you can name (i.e. IBM, HP, Dell, Cisco, AVTECH, Liebert, APC, etc.) will tell you to never run your IT equipment in an environment where the temperature is above 85° F. This is the industry agreed "blue line" where once crossed, you start to damage expensive IT equipment and lower its mean time between failures.

·  Human error remains the number one threat to data center uptime and availability. Primarily because humans react slower and with significantly less consistency than computers.

·  Failure of a primary or backup air conditioner is a major threat in any and all data centers. It is the #1 cause of overheating and environment caused downtime.

·  Computers simply don't swim.

There are 3 primary functional components managers should expect and demand from an IT environment monitoring solution. These include:  Monitoring, Alerting and Automatic Response. Just discovering a threatening condition or problem is not enough. IT managers need to be notified about issues in real-time by any and all methods technology allows, regardless of when or where they my be. Then, if appropriate, automatic responses should shut down servers & important hardware, transfer processing, start or stop applications and more within seconds. Anything less is an incomplete solution that will later cost you both downtime and money.

Data centers are each unique in their environment monitoring needs and potential risks. Applying a "one solution fits all" approach obviously is not appropriate. What seems to work best for many managers is an approach of using a combination of different solutions, some larger and some smaller, to meet the current IT monitoring needs that exist within a data center or throughout an organization. As the data center environment and needs change over time and with new equipment, managers have the greatest flexibility to move monitoring hardware and sensors around in order to use them more effectively.

One of the most popular IT environment monitoring products ever is Room Alert 11ER. This is a small 1U 19" rack mount device that monitors real-time temperature, humidity and main power while offering 11 sensor ports for virtually any type of sensor device.

Room Alert 11ER plugs directly into the network via Ethernet for immediate use and draws only 5V of power via a 110-240V power adapter that works anywhere in the world and includes an international plug adapter. It has a built-in web server that displays real-time temperature and humidity, high and low watermarks, sensor status, custom labels and more. Alerts can be sent out directly and automatically from the Room Alert 11ER hardware via email, SMS and SNMP.

Even though Room Alert 11ER does not require any external software for use, AVTECH bundles a small PageR 10 Object Enterprise (PageR) license at no additional cost. PageR allows unlimited alerting by any method, alert hierarchies, scheduling, dependencies, logging, automatic corrective actions and monitoring of any server, device or event across the network. PageR provides a single and central interface to monitor and manage an unlimited number of Room Alert units, as well as AVTECH's TemPageR and competitive products. If your organization prefers to use another software monitoring package, like Tivoli, OpenView or Unicenter, you can immediately monitor Room Alert 11ER via SNMP trap or query.

The first year of Maintenance, Support & Upgrade Service is also included at no charge and provides unlimited technical support, 4-6 firmware and software updates each year, 2 CD distributions a year, printed documentation and the only 100% guarantee for complete hardware replacement in the industry. No worries though as Room Alert 11ER is reliable and used by over 80% of the Fortune 1000, 37 of 50 state governments, at the White House and many other locations in over 184 countries.

There are multiple vendors offering IT environment monitoring products. However, the leading vendors worldwide are AVTECH Software, American Power Conversion (APC) and Sensaphone. Regardless of your preference for vendors, be sure to investigate all the differences before you purchase because there is a lot to consider and many features are only apparent after the product is delivered. Look at the up front and long term costs, what sensors are included and which cost extra, how much do additional sensors cost, what alerting options are available, can you log data, how mobile is the hardware, is it easy to setup and use, what support services are provided, is the company website informative and easy to find the answers you need, is there a hardware replacement guarantee and more. The best solution will meet your unique needs and offer the greatest benefits at the lowest cost.

The need for IT environment monitoring is obvious although the choice of how to implement such is not. A good IT environment monitoring investment should be made by weighing the initial cost against potential savings or benefits of the solution, both for the short and long term. Keep in mind that "Disaster Recovery is Old Thinking" while "Disaster Prevention is Responsible Thinking".