Testimonials

Server rooms and data centers are fraught with potential threats. Malicious attacks, security breaches and physical damages are looming continually over the IT department and threaten to interrupt day to day business as well as damage vital equipment. Although IT administrators take steps to limit these potential risks, feeling secure is not always an absolute.

Jack Mitchell and the Bentonville Public Schools technology team thought they were well protected in regards to temperature control in their data center. However, they chose to use a Sensatronics monitoring solution to be sure. As a result, they averted a detrimental environmental event and saved a data center valued at over $700,000!

Bentonville Public Schools

This school system is comprised of 15 schools located in and around Bentonville, Arkansas in the northwest portion of the state bordering on Montana. The district supports grades K-12 and currently has over 10,000 matriculating students.

They have made substantial investments into providing their students with access to technology and each school is part of a WAN connected via fiber optics throughout the area. There is also built in redundancy to ensure connectivity.

Primary Data Center

Although they have a backup data center, the primary server room houses the bulk of the school district's IT equipment and intellectual data. This 500 square foot facility contains 55 mission critical servers, the entire VOIP system, numerous routers, switches and other appliances.

As a precaution, they cool the room with two air conditioning units, which they calculated would be sufficient. There was no additional environmental monitoring solution in place, prior to installation of the Sensatronics solution. However, the AC units were on a battery backup and had access to a generator, should the need arise.

Purchase of the Sensatronics Solution

Prior to the major incident noted here, Jack had experienced an air conditioning unit failure. One of the units became frozen, as sometimes happens. The temperature rose but the issue was quickly discovered and the AC unit was brought back online. As a result, Jack decided to install the Sensatronics monitor and use their current network monitoring solution to setup their monitoring and alerting functions.

The Incident

The Sensatronics IT Temperature Monitor had only been up and running for two days when late on a Friday afternoon, the problematic AC unit decided to freeze up again. The second and smaller AC unit could not handle the additional load. As a result, the room temperature quickly rose 10 degrees in about an hour. Due to the timing, Jack states that they "would not have noticed until Monday when 50 servers, 2 SANS, 2 core routers, and our VOIP system roasted themselves."

At the time the failure occurred, Jack and his team were working across town. Since they had configured the system to alert them should the temperature rise dramatically, an SMS message was sent to Jack's cell phone, notifying him of the impending damage. Jack quickly responded by shutting down a number of priority services to decrease the amount of heat being generated, allowing the one operable AC unit to meet the needs of the room. Maintenance was also brought in and the second AC unit was repaired and brought back online.

Conclusion

Jack and the Bentonville School District technology team manage a significantly sized data center. The server room holds approximately $700,000 worth of equipment, the majority of which was saved due to the Sensatronics monitoring solution. Within two days of installation, the Sensatronics system more than paid for itself. Had this not been in place, the delivery of IT services would have been severely impacted, not to mention the substantial financial loss.

In the words of Jack Mitchell:

"THE TEMPERATURE MONITOR SAVED OUR data center."

Chad Rendell worked with our sales team to develop a solution that met his basic temperature monitoring need. The final purchase consisted of 2 E4 IT Temperature Monitors and 4 Standard Probes. This configuration allowed Chad to begin monitoring 2 temperature points in each of 2 server rooms.

For this particular customer, we did not supply a software application initially. Chad chose to use his HP Insight network monitoring application. Upon receipt of the units, he easily integrated the hardware to create a monitoring solution that alerted him when his data center temperature started to rise.

"Just wanted to give you a heads up and thanks. One of your devices saved our butt this past weekend. We had a site that had a power outage knocking out the A/C. I received a page and alerted the HVAC guys even before they knew about it."

Concord Hospital Implements Preventative Maintenance for its Food Services Division

"The refrigerators run 24x7 even if you do not," so says Tom Serafin, Director of Food Services for Concord Hospital (www.concordhospital.org), in Concord, NH. The units need to be monitored consistently to ensure compliance with the many regulatory agencies who oversee the hospital.

Like many other hospitals, for years the food services division manually monitored its refrigeration units, someone would walk from unit to unit and log the time and temperature twice a day. It was time consuming, and required those taking the measurements to be extremely detailed in order to accurately reflect the temperatures. The staff was then required to respond to those temperatures not in range. File drawers full of handwritten temperature logs were kept in Serafin s office.

Because the hospital has recently implemented the Sensatronics temperature monitoring solution, refrigeration units are now monitored automatically, data is stored online, and Serafin is alerted immediately if refrigerator temperatures are out of acceptable range or doors are kept open for a prolonged amount of time. The Sensatronics solution was recommended to the hospital because of its cost effective, feature-rich capabilities and its simple Web-based configuration that allows the health of the food services division to be monitored from any computer with Ethernet services.

Comprised of both hardware and software, the monitoring solution triggers alerts and alarms based on thresholds defined by Serafin, and can send them to a network station (such as security), pager, cell phone or text messenger. "I was impressed with the simplicity of the solution, as well as the low cost. It was extremely affordable," says Serafin. Couple that with the risk of losing a refrigerator containing up to $10,000 worth of food and this simple solution could pay for itself with one alert. Sensatronics' automated solutions have even been known to increase compliance to food safety and quality audits.

If Concord Hospital chooses to expand upon its environmental monitoring system, the solution can be configured to monitor other hospital divisions as well. From blood banks to pharmacies to labs; any division that requires cold storage monitoring is a great candidate for the temperature monitoring solution.

Sensatronics can implement a cost-effective preventative solution for you, too.

The true value of implementing an environmental monitoring solution often becomes apparent only after the relief of having avoided a potentially catastrophic event. Convergent Broadband Communications, Inc (www.cbbaz.com), a full-service provider of flexible broadband communications solutions for new and existing multi-family properties, learned this first hand last month when they were able to avert a disaster to one of their cable head ends.

Because CBC had recently installed a Sensatronics Model EM1 Environmental Monitor to monitor the equipment in one of their apartment complexes, they were immediately notified when the air conditioning failed. They were then able to take appropriate action before an overheated cable modem termination system (CMTS) interrupted service.

Mike Lapadu, General Manager for CBC explains. "In the past, customers would notify us of a cable outage and we would dispatch techs to diagnose and resolve the problem. In this case, a Sensatronics temperature monitor alerted us to a potential problem that we were able to resolve before there was any disruption of service. The alert came in the form of a text message to the cell phone of one of our on-call techs."

The Sensatronics solution was recommended by Satellite Management Services, Inc (www.smstv.com), a nationwide full-service provider of equipment, programming, construction and consulting for the private cable industry and a distributor of Sensatronics environmental monitoring equipment.

The Sensatronics solution is cost effective, feature-rich and provides broad capabilities in a simple Web-based configuration. Comprised of both hardware and software, Sensatronics triggers alerts and alarms of any form from e-mail to cell phone, to pagers and interfaces to a variety of software applications. Customers achieve uninterrupted business in the face of potentially disastrous events.

"If we had not invested in the Sensatronics solution, it could have cost us thousands in repair or replacement costs," says Lapadu. Couple that with the immeasurable cost to the business associated with customer dissatisfaction and this simple solution paid for itself with one alert.