Installing an environmental monitoring system is the first step towards protecting your critical IT environments. However, in order for the system to save you from data centre disaster, there must be effective alerting procedures in place to enable you to react quickly to potential threats to avoid network downtime.
Please see below our top tips for effective Sever Room or Data Centre Alerting Solutions:
CHOOSE THE RIGHT ALERTING METHODS
Some users are happy to receive an email when an alarm occurs, some like an SMS text or voice message, whilst others prefer to have an audio/visual beacon. Jacarta products can alert users to alarm conditions in a variety of ways. The most effective alerting solutions will utilise numerous methods to ensure alerts are sent in every eventuality. For example, adding a GSM Modem to your interSeptor Pro or iMeter will allow you to receive alerts even in the event of a network failure interrupting email alerting.
SEND TO MULTIPLE CONTACTS
In many cases one person will have overall responsibility for ensuring that your IT equipment is up-and-running. However, by sending out alerts to numerous contacts it is much more likely that someone who is available can respond and intervene before that small leak becomes a big flood! Our iMeter device and PYXIS software can even send alerts to different members of personnel via their preferred methods depending on the time of day or type of alarm. A typical example of this will be sending alerts to members of staff who are on-call or on-site at any given time
UPDATE CONTACTS REGULARLY
A simple tip but something that is easy to overlook. After personnel changes or when staff go away on holiday don’t forget to update your alert contacts.
TEST REGULARLY
It is important to regularly test your alerting mechanisms. When carrying out testing make sure that the alert is sent by triggering an actual alarm. This can be done by changing the ‘normal’ state of a Go-Probe sensor or changing the alarm threshold of a temperature sensor. A successful test will result in an alert being sent out – via your chosen method(s) – by the device to all the required contacts.
ENSURE ALERTS ARE EASY TO IDENTIFY
By giving sensors and alarms easily identifiable names it becomes much simpler to locate the potential threat. We would recommend sensor type & sensor location as a starting point. However, other relevant information can be added if required. It is also possible to receive information with your alert such as the current temperature and the severity level of the alarm.
If you have any questions regarding the alerting methods that you are using, then please don’t hesitate to contact us.
