Environmental Monitoring Technology
The Lifeblood of Business – The Data Center

The information that is processed, stored and sent via the endless number of machines that fill the racks of Data Centers is mission critical. Outages causing downtime of a network or application is an ever occurring problem within this environment, resulting in companies incurring huge losses for even a couple of minutes of downtime.

Analysts estimate that as much as 40% of outages in data centres result from operator errors and human interference. A Data Center that can run itself seems the optimum solution. The vision of hardware, software and networks that operate without much human interference and create a microclimate of their own are no longer merely a vision. They exist today, and any necessary human interaction can be carried out remotely over a secure network link.

In order to create the reality of this vision, numerous environmental monitoring sensors, such as temperature and humidity sensors, cabinet airflow detectors, intrusion detection systems and the like are constantly operational. The collected data is sent via Ethernet to the network administrator on a periodic basis. Commonly this information flow can be managed by a Device Server, enabling the sensors to communicate over the network with the administrator.

Perle Systems, is part of this preventative monitoring solution, with our Ethernet IOLAN I/O Device Servers, triggering advance warning necessary to prevent small issues from becoming big ones, while increasing uptime and resource efficiency.

Environmental Monitoring Technology enables comprehensive access and control of relays and temperature sensors, remote digital I/O, analog I/O, as well as connecting remote serial equipment on any IP network. The IOLAN I/O Device Server, has the ability to monitor environmental alarms, intrusion detection, relay contact closures and equipment failure. Through remote administrator or application control, opening and closing of integrated relay contacts or activation of digital output signals can be incorporated into any response of a critical event.

Perle IOLAN I/O Device Servers have the capability of measuring input conditions and intelligently alerting enterprise resources such as central applications, Syslog or SNMP. By instantly generating alerts when pre-defined threshold levels have been exceeded, alarm notifications such as an email are passed along when needed thereby saving costs, the administrator’s time and ultimately the dangers of a data centre outage.