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1. denotes firmware currently installed Schedule Reset This will stop scheduled firmware upload retry It wont retry again and again in a loop Will take effect when next retry starts The last entry in the table is Available Servers version number is selected in this entry then that version will be uploaded to all the servers that are in a Ready status If an attempted update fails an error message will be displayed and WatchDog Console will retry it after ten or fifteen minutes Remember that as of our series II product line ITWatchDogs Climate Monitors have a fail safe update process so if an attempted update is interrupted or fails for any reason the Climate Monitor will continue to run using its current firmware 82 Alarms The Alarms page allows user to set an alarm configuration for sensors of the same measurement across multiple climate monitors Any type of sensor that is connected to the units can be selected and only internal sensors only external sensors or all sensors of that type can be displayed Any alarm can be added or modified from this page The user can select which email addresses should be notified which SNMP traps should be sent and how long the alarm should remain tripped and if it should be repeated or not Selected alarms can be disabled also Home Status Graph Logs Firmware Alams Hop Alarms Sensor location
2. _01914B4F1200005D Temperature vi Relative Humidity Light Level v Air Flow CI Sound Level vi Monkey Analog 2 Analog 3 RTAFH 60000001D7E64314 Temperature F 84 70 F SuperGoose II Light Level 26 SuperGoose II Sound Level T SuperGoose II Air Flow 13 RTAFH Relative Humidity 30 RTAFH 23 A variety of internal and external sensor options are available including Temperature U Water leak detection Humidity Voltage Airflow AC Current Sound Level Smoke Alarm U Light Level U City Power Monitor monitors the power company voltage 48VDC Monitor for Telecom installations Power Consumption including real power volt amperes and power factor U Contact closures such as door open or breaker tripped detectors Most members of t Se family have internal 77 measure things and humidity The at least one 775 a proprietary technology to cont Geese This external bus allows sensors to be hundreds of feet away from the Goose if necessary Many WeatherGoose models have general purpose analog inputs ITWatchDogs offers a set of analog sensors that connect to these ports The analog inputs can also be used with any type of sensor that outputs a signal between C The analog inputs have weak pull up resistors on them they can be used to monitor dry contac
3. A PoE capable router supplies power to these monitors using otherwise unused conductors in the Ethernet cable This eliminates the need for a separate power cable ITWatchDogs offers a PoE Injector that adds PoE capability when it is not built into the router We also offer a PoE Splitter that works with Climate Monitors that do not have PoE built in This allows the user to run only the Ethernet cable to the Monitor instead of both the Ethernet cable and the power cable There is one exception to this the PowerGoose H described in Chapter 4 has a standard AC power cord rather than the wall transformer 28 members of the family connect to network using a standard RJ45 jack The Geese can be connected to any 10baseT 10 100baseT or 10 100 1000baseT Ethernet Note that the Geese are not compatible with equipment which attempts to force 100 only or 1Gb 10Gb only operation and does not support fallback to 10Mbit operation Users of certain Cisco 1Gb 10Gb Gigabit routers in particular should beware of this when attempting to connect any of ITWatchDogs climate monitors into a Gigabit network Reset Button Underneath the Ethernet jack is a small hole for the WeatherGoose 11 IP Reset button which restores various settings on the unit to their default values The unit can be reset by inserting a jeweler s screwdriver or a paperclip into this hole Note This is NOT a power up reset rather it Cn ii
4. Make sure that the surface the sensor is placed on is nonconductive Since the sensor detects water by electrical conductivity between the metal brads if those brads are in contact with a conductive surface such as a metal tray the sensor will always show full conductivity wet or dry Routine testing of water sensors is essential Unlike temperature which can show revealing trends over time water is likely to be an all or nothing event Periodically dunking water sensors in a cup will confirm the sensors are operational Correct orientation of the sensors is also essential We were looking at another installation in a data center I asked the tour guide to see the water sensors and he lifted a floor tile to show me a sensor he had installed near a floor drain point The sensor had been installed upside down Be sure the metal sensor brads are against the floor or the sensor won t work 13 Installation rules for water sensors 1 The sensor must face down metal brads against floor 2 Placement locations a Water collection trays such as the trays below sprinklers Don t forget to insulate the sensors with a piece of vinyl floor tile b Lowest point on the floor or below raised flooring Find the lowest place on your floor Spill some water and see where it puddles in your server room That s a perfect place for a water sensor c Below a water pipe junction where the chances of a pipe leaking are good
5. restores some parameters to their default values Don t push the button unless you re sure that s what you want There are two resets available simple and total A simple reset erases the user names and passwords and resets the network parameters to their default values see the chapter on WeatherGoose II Firmware for details To do a simple reset simply push the button and hold it for 15 20 seconds until both the Idle and Activity LEDs light up simultaneous ly Release the button and wait about 5 seconds for the unit to finish resetting A total reset restores the factory defaults to all settings on the WeatherGoose including alarms logging and display settings as well as all the Config information To do a total reset turn the unit off then hold the button down while powering up again Continue to hold the button for at least 5 seconds then release it and let the unit reboot normally Again this erases ALL of your settings the unit will be as it came from the factory 29 Internal Sensors WeatherGoose II has five internal sensors Temperature 0 Relative Humidity Airflow Light Level U Sound Level Temperature can be displayed in Fahrenheit or Celsius while relative humidity is of course displayed in percent Light level sound level and airflow are measured on a relative scale of 0 99 rather than in fixed units of measurement Ambient light level for example displa
6. 19 Chapter 2 The WeatherGoose Family 20 WeatherGoose I Family Overview cuiii bi 21 Other 25 The ITWatchDogs Climate Monitor Family 26 Chapter 3 WeatherGoose ll 27 WeatherGoose M Oy ei ye T 28 Input cr 28 Reset 29 added 30 External 30 Remote Digital Sensors 31 Analog Dry Contact Input Terminals 31 Chapter 4 Other Climate Monitors 33 Other Climate 34 The S perGoose eei cals PE IER DR EU 35 The Mini 36 The 37 The Oe ee vae 38 We Freely CODES E 39 The PO WTO OS OU area 40 Climate Monitor Comparisons 41 Chapter 5 Sensors 42 Digital MR Rc 44 Remote Temperature SeISOE 44 Remote Temperature Airflow and Humidity CCAT Analog to Digital Adaptot eere 45 Analog ME E 46 46 Door Contact A 47 City Power eiie rade aeo INE tbi e nba 47 SMOKE e
7. Config Server log history prior to 05 19 2010 12 45 11 and event log history prior to 05 25 2010 12 45 11 have been archived You may download logs later than this date using the links below Sensor Log Click here to download all sensor data for all servers Event Log Click here to download event history 81 Firmware The Firmware page allows simultaneous updating of climate monitors firmware The page lists all the units that WatchDog console is monitoring The current status column lists the firmware release that each unit is currently running The drop down menus on the right list all the available firmware versions that are applicable to this server The user selects what version is to be downloaded to each server Once the Update button is pushed WatchDog Console will queue the update requests and push updated firmware to up to four units at a time If a particular unit is already running the selected firmware version nothing will be done i e Console will not attempt to update the firmware with a version that s already installed Home Status Graph Servers Logs Firmware Alarms Help Config Firmware Updates erver Current Status Update Status PERO d BAO TW V 5 available r d 40 5 available Fondy 8 40 5 available L AD Available Servers 9 available
8. Internal Sensor type Temperature C 26 Select None All invert Sensor Current Value Trip Type Trip Limit Notifications Add Remain Disable Buzzer Email SNMP Tripped Alam For Ud an TRIPPED 25 53 High 95 min o Low 999 Omin Low 999 Omin High 24 Imin Temperature on MiniGoose Il 2675 Low 999 Omin o Low 999 Omin Temperature C on WATCHDOGS 25 u Low 999 Omin Low 999 B ees on SuperGogse emo Uni 2481 u Low 999 Smin Temperature C on Demo Weather Goose 2606 n Low 999 Trip Trip Limit Notifications Remain Buzzer Email SNMP Tripped sion For High D OOOOO OC M repeat Only available on Series Il products with firmware 3 4 0 newer 83 Configuration The Configuration page allows user to change many default settings By default WatchDog Console listens for HTTP connections on port 8090 and for HTTPS on port 443 but both of those can be changed if desired Only HTTP only HTTPS or both connection types can be allowed The number of concurrent users can be limited from 1 to 16 in WatchDog Console 3 1 3 A connection timeout can be set Administra tor control and view only passwords can be set A limit on the amount of time a user can be idle before he is automatically logged out can be set Offset from
9. agito confirm Warming Record your password Loss of password may require 48 hours to recover 69 The Saved Configuration XML File allows a user to download current configuration in XML eXtensible Markup Language format This is a way to backup the current configuration settings by clicking the Download Current XML File button The saved configuration can be sent back to the Goose by clicking the Upload Local XML File button XML is a text based format so it is possible to edit the file before it is uploaded This should only be attempted by someone who is familiar with XML otherwise the upload may corrupt the Goose s configuration XML File Browse AL Fi e The certificate and key file for the SSL Secure Socket Layer encryp tion must be set up to use the secure HTTPS communication method instead of or in addition to the standard HTTP SSL Certificate and Private Key are INVALID SSL Certificate File 7 SSL Private Key File D Browse 70 The developers at ITWatchDogs are constantly improving firm ware New releases including bug fixes and new features are periodically posted to the web site www itwatchdogs com The Upload System Firmware button is how a new release is uploaded to a Goose The WeatherGoose II software includes this functionality that uploads new Firmware from the desktop to the Goose using the browser Unlike our
10. in time to do something about it 30 Remote Digital Sensors The WeatherGoose II has five RJ12 style jacks for external digital sensors These are used to attach external Digital Sensor Bus devices such as temperature sensors or temperature airflow humidity sensors The Digital Sensor Bus is a proprietary bus developed by ITWatchDogs for u Family IT WatchDogs s ES sensors that use it is mA oe digital devices but external splitters connections up to system s maxi Fermo seran the way the Sensor Bus works it is recommended that the total length of all the sensor cables connected to a single WeatherGoose not exceed 600 feet Analog Dry Contact Input Terminals This gray 5 terminal block is used Mask 285 265 2050 Temp to connect non digital sensors Gate 192 168 123 1 E pa such as current transformers door 223 switches or water sensors Three analog inputs are provided num bered 1 2 and 3 the two terminals labeled are the elec trical common or ground Two connections are provided for convenience internally they are tied together so it doesn t matter which sensor ground is connected to which terminal C 4 The analog inputs can be connected to any analog sensor that puts out 0 5 VDC signal as well as with dry contact signals such as door switches or relays ITWatchDogss sells a variety of analog sensors for use with the WeatherGoos
11. 20 1 205 1 005 1211 40 1 127 1 005 1 133 Step 1 Calculate Specific Heat A 3x3x2 meter room is 18 cubic meters which at 20C gives 18 1 211 kJ C 21 8 Step 2 Inverting to get C kJ we have 0 0459 C kJ 10kW 10kJ sec therefore 10KW dumped into 3x3x2 meter room at 20C will change by 10kJ sec 0 0459 C kJ 0 459 deg Celsius sec This assumes 1 Theroom is filled with dry air 2 The pressure in the room is constant 3 No heat loss occurs The specific heat of water vapor is about twice that of dry air meaning pure water vapor will change half as much as dry air in the above example You would have to know the relative weight of water in the air to account for humid air but the answer will be between 0 25 and 0 45 C sec 19 Chapter 2 The WeatherGoose II Family 20 WeatherGoose Family Overview IT WatchDogs ITWatchDogs family of climate monitor devices also known col lectively as WeatherGeese provide remote monitoring of environmen tal parameters in data centers server rooms and in other applications They watch for extreme temperatures extreme humidity failed fans and open doors that should be closed They can send an alarm if there s water on the floor or if some other device is drawing too much power or too little They monitor many other parameters including light and sound levels If the room lights are on when they shouldn t be that might be an indication that an un
12. GMT default temperature units F or and the number of concurrent firmware update sessions can be set The directory in which data is stored can be set or changed as well as the log archive directory The program can be tuned to trade memory usage for performance in case the server it is running on has a limited memory user can also enter usernames and passwords for the cameras that are being used if that is necessary Summary WatchDog Console provides an easy to use way to monitor and control a large number of ITWatchDogs Climate Monitors From it an operator can be alerted when an alarm is raised by any Monitor and he can easily zero in the problem It allows alarms to be set on multiple units at the same time and it provides a way to update the firmware on multiple units as well 84 4 2 X Chapter 8 Wrap Up 85 ITWatchDogs climate monitors protect against all sorts of hazards that might be encountered in a server room These include U Excessive heat U Too high or too low humidity U Airflow Problems U Lights on when they shouldn t be or off when they should be on U Noise levels too high or too low U Power failures or brownouts U Low battery voltages U 48 VDC supply malfunctions U Equipment drawing too much or too little current U Doors open when they shouldn t be U Water where it shouldn t be The climate monitors allow a manager to detect dangerous conditions and to
13. RelayGoose Il The RelayGoose II adds output and control capability to ITWatch Dogs climate monitors It includes three dry contact relays which can either be energized manually on a web page or automatically when an alarm trips Both the normally open NO and normally closed NC contacts are brought out to the front panel terminal blocks so the relays can be wired in whatever way is most suitable for your particular applica tion The relays can be configured to de energize when the alarm condi tion clears or to stay energized until they are manually cleared from the unit s web page by the user This function can be password protected so that only users with the control or admin password can clear a latched relay Each relay can switch a maximum load of 30 watts 60 VDC or 30 VAC rms which is generally sufficient to operate warning lights alarm sirens phone dialers and similar devices The RelayGoose II has an internal temperature sensor as well as 4 RJ12 jacks for external digital sensors and 6 analog dry contact inputs It also has an LCD display and an audible alarm horn identical to the ones included on the SuperGoose II The RelayGoose takes up 10 of space in 19 rack It is powered by 6 VDC from an external wall mounted supply The RelayGoose uses ITWatchDogs standard firmware see the Chapter on Firmware and uses the same sensors as the rest of the WeatherGoose family An optional version of the RelayGoos
14. a historical view of all the sensor data The user can select any measurement from the drop down at the top of the page The log period can be set from 2 4 or 8 hours or 2 7 14 or 28 days Note that you can only select as many hours or days as there are logged data points in the current database A list of all the connected climate monitors is shown below the graph The user can select which ones are graphed at one time A maximum of 20 servers can be graphed at one time Sensor Graph Select Sensor Humidity Select Time Scale 1 Week v AFIHT Sensor on SuperGoose II Weathercoose B WeatherGoose i superooose 68 Select Servers to Graph URL Version Last Contacted Status checked lt 20 2 85 10 14 2009 13 12 12 EUN 286 10 14 2009 13 12 11 Ok 2 86 10 14 2008 13 12 13 EM 3 29 402 10 14 2009 13 12 13 a 77 Servers Page A climate monitor must be entered on the Servers page for Watch Dog Console to monitor it To add a server the user provides its name or IP address a connection type and the necessary passwords to access the unit If the read only password is supplied WatchDog Console will be able to show a limited amount of information The control account allows alarms to be set and the admin password allows full control of the unit A climate monitor does not have to be up to be added to this list but its status will be shown as Error until Watch
15. a standard 120 VAC power and includes a 9V battery for backup The standard alarm includes an output that can be used to trigger a group of alarms when any one of them detects smoke ITWatchDogs kit uses this output to generate another output suitable to being connected to a climate monitor s analog input or to the appropriate CCAT model When no smoke has been detected the displayed value will be 99 once smoke is detected the value changes to 1 The monitor can be configured to send emails pages or SNMP TRAPs if that occurs Current Transformer Current transformers clamp around a single AC conductor and output a 0 to 5V value proportional to the current flowing in the conductor The current transformer can be set to measure 30 60 or 120 Amps full scale The output is suitable to be con nected to an analog input port on the climate moni tors that have them or to the appropriate CCAT The output is linear over the range For instance assuming the transformer is set to measure 0 30 amps if the current is 0 amps the output will be O volts If the current is 15 amps the output will be 2 5 volts and if 30 amps are flowing the output will be 5 volts The current transformer is we use is a split core type so it can be clamped around an existing wire instead of requiring that the wire be cut and passed through the core Important Notes The conductors in an AC cord must be separated the current transformer must clamp aroun
16. and switches support PoE which uses the Ethernet cable to supply power as well as connectivity to the devices connected to it This simplifies installation since a separate power supply and cable are not required the only cable needed is the Ethernet cable This makes the MicroGoose especially suited for monitoring areas where AC power socket isn t available or easily accessible or for co loca tion data centers where the operators wish to independently monitor conditions throughout the facility but are prevented by contract or agree ment from using any of the power outlets inside the racks being rented by the customers The MicroGoose is compatible with the IEEE 802 3af Power over Ethernet standard ITWatchDogs also offers a Injector accessory that adds the power connection to a regular Ethernet cable in case your router does not support PoE This accessory would be installed near the router and an Ethernet cable run from it to the MicroGoose Again the MicroGoose can derive the power it needs directly from the Ethernet cable if the cable is attached to a PoE capable router or splitter Most other members of the family do not have this capability built in but a Splitter is available that takes the power from the Ethernet cable and generates 6 VDC from it Using the splitter will allow any of ITWatchDogs climate monitors except the PowerGoose II to run using PoE instead of a wall transformer 38 The
17. be notified if they occur The climate monitors display their sensor readings on web pages that can be accessed from anywhere on the Internet with an ordinary browser They can send email alerts if readings go out of bounds and they can also send SNMP traps to an SNMP Manager Application The climate monitors include SNMP agent functionality so that the data center manager can integrate them into his existing man agement process 86 Monitoring Temperature Heat is a crucial issue in data centers and many other places Most members of the Goose family have internal temperature sensors that are accurate to within 0 5 C Most family members also have digital bus interfaces that allow up to sixteen external temperature sensors The internal sensor measures the temperature near the climate moni tor That s useful if the monitor is mounted in a rack with other servers or installed in some other enclosure where the temperature needs to be monitored The external sensors allow a lot of flexibility in monitoring a room One can be placed on top of a rack to measure exhaug acrature A sensor can be mounted in each of multiple racks Vue em are cooling properly Sensors be put in differ places aroun ghe room to find temperature variations and hot IE more cooling or cold spots where cooling is being is to put one sensor on the A C return vent and another off dse difference between the two tempera
18. be raised if any one trips A door contact sensor 15 also available It can be wired to alarm if a door is open when it shouldn t be or closed when it should be open Water is a huge problem in a computer room or anywhere else where a lot of electronic equipment is located Most commercial building are required to have sprinkler systems and a bad sprinkler head can put a lot of water in a room in a hurry The drip pan that collects condensed water from an air conditioner can cause a serious problem too If the drain gets clogged up the pan can fill up and start leaking These pans are often found in the ceiling of a room where a leak can do more damage This can actually be a bigger problem that a sprinkler failure because it happens quietly and it might be a long time before someone discovers it ITWatchDogs offers two water sensors One is a point sensor that sits on the floor and trips a Goose alarm if it gets wet The water snake is a more sophisticated device that detects water anywhere along the length of a detector cable hence that can be up to 300 feet long Water snakes are typically run around the room behind the racks to detect water before it is visible Both the point sensor and the water snake attach to analog sensor inputs or to the appropriate CCAT 91 Output Relays In some situations it is useful for a climate monitor to do more than display an alarm on a web page or send an email alert Some fire
19. find One customer discovered after installing his power monitor that his incoming line voltage sagged at least twice a week to about 100 volts very close to brown out conditions Once again graphs tell the story The Cisco installer technicians we spoke to said their gear starts shutting down automatically about 105 volts They recommend running all critical gear off the UPS units which are far more forgiving of voltage changes and produce a steady voltage output We recommend all server room power be on dedicated circuits that is the wires should run from the power transformer on the power pole outside the building directly to the computer equipment inside and the server room should have its own breaker box independent from the rest of the building circuits Many facility managers oppose this due to the expense but the benefits can easily outweigh the additional cost 17 Door Sensors These tiny sensors long used in the security industry have two parts a magnet and a magnetically activated switch If the magnet gets close enough to the switch usually within an inch or less the switch closes These sensors offer a low cost option to monitor whether the doors to the server room or equipment cabinets are opened or closed Server and UPS cabinets are excellent candidates for this kind of monitoring since under normal conditions no one should be opening those cabinets without the IT administrators knowledge not to men
20. in a standard 19 rack Combining functions of the MiniGoose II and the 16 port splitter into a single unit it has an internal temperature sensor like the MiniGoose II while providing a full complement of sixteen RJ 12 connectors the maximum number supported by the unit for external digital sensors It also provides three built in analog sensor inputs which can support either dry contact devices switches relays etc conductivity sensors such as water sensors or sensors which output a 0 5 VDC signal Like all members of the WeatherGoose II family it uses the same firm ware is controlled by the same user interface and connects to the network via a standard 10BaseT ethernet jack Since it has both analog and digital sensor connections it supports the full range of external sensor devices 37 The MicroGoose The MicroGoose is the simplest of ITWatchDogs Climate Monitor devices It is designed for applications where temperature and humidity need to be monitored while size cost and installa tion complexity must be minimized The MicroGoose has an internal sensor for both temperature and humidity Unlike other members of the WeatherGoose II family though it does not have any provision for adding any external digital or analog connections Although it can operate off of the same 6 VDC external power supply as the other Geese the MicroGoose also has Power over Ethernet capability built in Some routers
21. of web pages The firmware includes a fully functional web server The Geese use standard Internet protocols such as TCP IP HTTP HTTPS DNS and DHCP so they are compatible with internal networks or the public Internet A user does not need any special client software on his or her computer just a standard web browser such as Internet Explorer or Firefox ITWatchDogs tests each new release to make sure the web pages are rendered properly by a wide range of browsers The Goose family firmware also includes an SNMP agent which means any Goose can be monitored by popular network management packages such HP OpenView WhatsUp Gold or LoriotPro SNMP v1 v2c and the secure SNMP v3 are all supported A Goose can send alert emails through SMTP or ESMTP and can send encrypted emails via TLS SSL ITWatchDogs also offers a Windows application called Watchdog Console which allows multiple Geese to be monitored from one PC When the firmware starts up it automatically discovers the sensors that are attached and starts scanning them If a new sensor is attached while the firmware is running it will be discovered and added to the scan A new scan is launched about every five seconds or so and the web pages updated However the new data will not appear on screen immediately unless the browser s refresh button is clicked right away The Goose refreshes the web pages every 60 seconds whether the user clicks refresh or not The measuremen
22. older series I devices there is no need to connect the Goose directly to a desktop PC and run a special update installation program to upload new firmware into the Goose everything can be done straight from the web browser as easily as uploading a photo to your favorite blog or picture hosting web site ES fried oet dt Firmware package file Firmware upload may take a couple minutes Please wait for response from browser ITWatchDogs has developed and patented a method to insure that the entire file is uploaded correctly and completely before control is switched to the new software That way if the upload is interrupted in some way or the file is garbled the Goose will continue to run the existing software instead of crashing or locking up from trying to execute invalid or corrupt ed code 71 Chapter 7 WatchDog Console Home Status Graph Servers Logs Firmware Alarms Help Config Consolidated Home View Camera Images Show 9 O Dont Show Normal Readings Show Dont Show Alarm Notifications Owl MicroGoose WeatherGoose47 Digi MiniGoose WeatherGoose WeatherGoose Climate Monitor 72 WatchDog Console Some of ITWatchDogs customers have just one or a few of our climate monitors They can control their units by connecting to them one atatime But many of our customers are responsible for monitoring tens or hundreds of units it is not feasible for
23. or burglar alarm systems can be triggered by an external contact closure Indicator lamps or strobes that are triggered by an alarm can help a data center manager quickly identify which rack contains the bad unit The RelayGoose II includes three relays that can be energized when alarms are tripped The relays have Form C contacts which means the common normally open and normally closed contacts are all brought to the front panel That allows the switch to open when the relay is ener gized or to close when it is energized whichever makes sense for the application Conclusion ITWatchDogs Climate Monitor family provides cost effective ways for a data center manager or a system administrator to make sure all is well in the equipment room Various members of the family have different characteristics so that the purchaser can find one that precisely meets his or her needs 92
24. relay opens when the cable has been cut or otherwise damaged The climate monitor will display O when the relays are closed and 99 when they are open The user can configure the monitor to send emails pages or SNMP traps when either relay opens future expansion ITWatchDogs is always looking out for potential new applications and sensors to add to our product line so be sure to visit out web site to see the latest developments 49 Chapter 6 Climate Monitor Family Firmware SuperGoose II Demo Mode qum 25 85 i Bru Er 16 30 26 Sensors 50 Climate Monitor Family Firmware ITWatchDogs family of climate monitors which includes the Super Goose IL WeatherGoose IL MicroGoose RelayGoose and others collectively called the allow the user to monitor remotely critical environmental parameters in server rooms and similar places and to be notified when those parameters exceed specified thresholds The Goose family firmware is designed to take full advantage of the capabili ties of the various family members while presenting a human interface that is easy to understand and use Functionality is important but ease of use is critical As with any other device a climate monitor is not much use if it is too hard to set up and operate Note This chapter describes the Goose firmware as it existed when this book was written However ITWatchDogs is con stantly adding features and improving the use
25. the opposing magnetic fields will cancel each other out as illustrated below current passing through a single wire generates a magnetic field around the wire which is detected by the current transformer and turned into a voltage signal the higher the current being carried by the wire the stronger the magnetic field and the greater the voltage signal from the current transformer opposing currents from the hot and neutral wires generate magnetic fields of opposite polarity which cancel each other out leaving no field for the 16 Dual Power Strips Many devices such as Cisco routers have and B power inputs If you haven t used equipment with two power inputs the utility seems vague until you need to power down an entire power strip to add or remove equipment With dual power inputs the equipment automatically oper ates off of whichever input is hot switching between them without interruption If the equipment you plan to install in your server room is available with this feature we highly recommend it Power Trends Seen in the Graphs The ability to measure and graph will sometimes show some surpris ing variations in voltage changes Normal line voltage in the U S is supposed to be 120VAC and as long as the lights are on and everything is running it rarely occurs to us that it might be anything else But when you monitor and graph your power over a period of days you just might be surprised at what you
26. the input value does not change quickly for instance the temperature in a room cannot change very much in only 60 seconds For measurements that can change quickly the user can select the high water or low water mark In this mode the value logged is the highest or lowest value that was seen in the last 60 seconds This useful for things like door contact sensors since a door can be opened and then closed in a short time The entire log can be downloaded at any time in Separated Value CSV format which can be read by Excel and most other spread sheet programs The user can clear all the data out of the log by checking the Reset Logs box Note that the user must press the Save Changes button before any change including clearing the data will take effect Data from the log can be graphed on this page as well The user can select which data items to graph as well as the time scale of the graph The time scale can be from the last 15 minutes to the last 30 days Note that the graph is drawn from the log so a sensor s readings have to be in the log in order to be graphed If logging has been turned off for a particular sensor then data from that sensor cannot be shown in the graph On the other hand turning the graphing off for a particular sensor does not affect the data in the log Data will continue to be accumulated as long as logging for that sensor is turned on of course and will remain in the log un
27. voltage is between 0 and 5 volts DC can be connected to these analog inputs Readings from analog sensors are not displayed in any standard units rather the displayed value is shown as 00 99 where 00 corresponds to a 0 V input and 99 corresponds to a 5 V input In addition the analog input ports have weak pull up resistors on them so they can also be used to monitor dry contact signals such as switches or relay contacts If the contact is open the input will read at or close to 99 while if the contact is closed it will read at or close to 00 Note that unlike Digital Bus sensors analog sensors have no inherent wiring length limit although excessively long wiring runs could affect the accuracy of the readings due to increased electrical resistance or induced EM interfer ence 43 Digital Sensors Remote Temperature Sensor The digital remote temperature sensor measures temperatures in the range 40 85 C 40 185 F It is accurate to within 0 Y The sensor is available in a variety of cable 12 20 100 foot lengths are stan dard and custom lengths also availak special applications if necessary These sensors Sure 16 temperature sensors can be connected to a single climate monitor The sum of the lengths of all the cables attached to a single monitor cannot exceed 600 feet Remote Temperature Airflow and Humidity Probe This device combines three sensors temper
28. 0 60 or 120 amp circuits Alarms can be set in the usual way on the current reading The transformer works only on AC circuits it will not work on DC It must be clamped around just one of the conductors If it is clamped around both conductors the magnetic fields will cancel each other out Monitoring Power ITWatchDogs PowerGoose II adds the ability to measure the power being drawn from a 10 outlet power strip on the back of its chassis The unit reports the same environmental measurements as the WeatherGoose II but also reports the voltage and peak voltage current and peak current the real and apparent power and power factor from the power strip Monitoring Light and Sound Levels Several members of the climate monitor family have internal light and sound sensors These sensors measure the level of the light or sound in terms of light or dark and quiet or loud Alarms can be set on the levels in the usual way One of ITWatchDogs customers detected an intruder in their server room when he turned on the lights in the middle of the night Another customer uses the light level sensor to log light and dark periods in a biology experiment 90 Smoke Alarm Door Sensor and Water Alarms ITWatchDogs offers a smoke alarm that can be connected to an analog input on the climate monitors or thought a CCAT to a digital port Several alarms can be distributed in a room and daisy chained together so an alarm will
29. 15000000 832 028 tempSensor Temp Sensor Remove all unplugged devices Changes Sensor Device Friendly Name Analog 1 Internal Sensors An Analog Sensor Analog 2 Internal Sensors Another Analog Sensor Analog 3 Internal Sensors Yet Another Analog Sen Save Changes 62 Config The Config Page breaks up into five subpages Each of these pages covers a dif ferent part of the WeatherGoose II configura tion It is recommended that a userid and password for the administrator account be set That way only someone logged in as admin can modify critical settings As willbe shown later there are potentially three levels of access Admin 63 Configuring Network Parameters The Goose s network parameters can be set manually or from a DHCP server In the example below the addresses are set manually At a minimum the IP address Subnet Mask and Gateway address must be specified At least one DNS server must be specified so that the user can enter URLs instead of IP addresses for external machines Configuration Current Network Configuration set statically O Use DHCP for Network Configuration and DNS Server Addresses Use DHCP for Network Configuration and Static DNS server addresses Use Static Network Configuration and DNS server addresses Address 67 79 205 81 Subnet Mask 255 255 255 224 i fields above used only for static configuration Primary DNS Server 243 411
30. 25 Secondary DNS Server 24 93 41 126 fields above used only for static configuration Protocols HTTP and HTTPS v Port HTTPS Port 4437 Telnet Service Enabled v Save Chang The user has the option to allow connections to the Goose using the standard HTML access secure HTTPS access or both The unit defaults to the standard ports of 80 and 443 for HTTP and HTTPS respectively but these can be changed if your intended application requires non stan dard port assignments The Telnet service which provides access to a powerful command line interface to configure a variety of options on the device can also be enabled or disabled from here Note that the Save Changes button must be clicked or any changes will not take effect 64 Monitoring Configuration As described previously the Goose can send an email to up to five email addresses when an alarm is tripped The user has to designate a mail server and set the Goose up to talk to it Each address can be set to receive emails only during business hours after hours or always The days of the week and the hours included in business hours can be defined as well Configuration SMTP Server 76 79 31 227 SMTP Port Leaving the POP3 Server blank with the Lisemame Password filled in and using SMTP Port 465 enables ESMTP SSL From E mail Adress 777 Business After Send alarms to this recipient Always Hours Hours T
31. Alarms Config Consolidated Home View Camera Images Show Dont Show Normal Readings Show 9 O Dont Show Alarm Notifications Owl MicroGoose Owl MiniGoose MicroGoose MiniGoose fi Normal Notifications Owl SuperGoose Il Owl MiniGoose XP Owl WeatherGoose SuperGoose Demo Unit IT WATCHDOGS Demo Weather Goose CU _ 4 74 The monitors are grouped into three groups monitors that have alarms that have tripped monitors that have no alarms tripped and monitors that could not be contacted during the last refresh cycle The top two on the previous page have alarms that are currently tripped None of the alarms on the bottom three units are tripped If WatchDog Console failed to contact a climate monitor during the last refresh that unit would be listed as being in an error status This could be due to a network problem or some problem with the monitor itself Each climate monitor is labeled with its Friendly name SuperGoose Demo Unit ITWATCHDOGS etc as well as its model Owl MicroGoose Owl SuperGoose IT etc The labels are hyper links to the actual climate monitors if you click on one you are taken to that unit s landing page The sensor readings from each device are shown with it the sensors from each device including external sensors are shown sensors are listed by the friendly names that were assigned to them when the climate monitors we
32. Dog Console is able to contact it Home Status Graph Servers Logs Firmware Alarms Config Servers RL Last Contacted Status Owl MicroGoose inn itp J 67 79 25 84 80 3 4 0 05 25 2010 13 27 37 OK Out MinGoose 3 40 05 25 2010 13 27 35 Owi MiniGoose XP itp 57 79 25 96 90 3 40 05 25 2010 13 27 07 Owi SuperGoose Il DE 125757 79 205 15 80 340 05 25 2010 13 27 34 OK Ovwl WeatherGoose 3 40 hitp J 67 79 205 81 80 Details Details emove 05 25 2010 13 27 36 OK Details Add New Server Server Name or IP Address Connection Type Server Port 80 Server Admin Log In User Name Server Admin Log In Password Server Description The URL firmware version and last contacted time are shown for each server If an error was encountered the last time WatchDog Console tried to contact a monitor the status field will display an appropriate error message 78 More detail on a given climate monitor be shown by pushing Details button after its name on the Servers page The top of the page gives information about how WatchDog Console connects to it including the admin log in and password that WatchDog Console is using to access it If the server is in error status it may be because this information is wrong and the climate monitor is rejecting the log in attempt Server Details Return To Server List Select Server Owl MicroGoose v Console Inf
33. Goose II but with three low voltage relays to control external devices RelayGoosePOE II same as the RelayGoose II but capable of using Power over Ethernet PoE instead of an external 6 VDC supply PowerGoose II The same features as the WeatherGoose II plus AC power monitoring 26 Chapter 3 The WeatherGoose II 27 IT WatchDogs WeatherGoose ll Overview The WeatherGoose II is ITWatchDogs flagship product Many of the features of the WeatherGoose II are shared by other members of The WeatherGoose II Family As you can see fromthe illustration the WeatherGoose II fits 1U high 19 rack mount chassis of the connections are on the front panel for easy access Input Power The WeatherGoose II like most of the family runs on low voltage DC power input voltage must be between 6 and 12 volts cathe 6 VDC It might draw more current if external sensors are connected ITWatch S Analog Input gt Dogs includes suitable sound im wall transformer type exter nal supply with the Goose This supply can run on any voltage between 100 VAC and 240 VAC 50 or 60 Hz so it should be useable in most parts of the world International users may need an adaptor to go from the US style power plug to one that fits their local standard WeatherGoose II Climate Monitor Some of ITWatchDogs monitors can get their power through Power over Ethernet PoE
34. S 92 Introduction The 160 000 Sunday Cook in The meltdown at Acuity Software spurred development of low cost server room monitors a true story The equipment didn t look dead It looked the same as it did three days ago burn marks no melted faceplates Even the Cisco logos on the routers were still shiny white One thing was different it was very quiet in the server room Inside the room normally sounded like a vacuum cleaner plenty of fan noise Not today All the gear was dead Someone set this little guy to 95 F It did its job and killed the gear in the process Our IT manager was removing some servers from the racks and placing them on wheeled metal cart that looked like the kind the food caterers delivered lunch on On several units the tiny lights were fixed on as if the electronics inside the pizza box cases were still alive begging to be freed No rapid urgent flicker as in the past Just steady pleading from inside of some of the units Our server room was toast the gear 15 dead asked Fried Somebody left the thermostat turned up over the weekend and the heater cooked the gear heater blows into the server room I asked Yes it blows right in there He pointed to the ceiling register Any chance you ll be able to save the disks Very little The heat sublimates the bearing oil The drives go dry and seize up I m sending them to a recovery shop
35. SERVER ROOM CLIMATE amp POWER MONITORING by Gerry Cullen Contributors Gary Akins Jason Cohen Pedro DeKeratry Ron McCormack Pepe Ramos Michael Smith Bob Walsh ITWatchDogs January 2011 Third Edition All information and specifications subject to change ITWatchdogs Products Distributed in North America by Interworld Electronics amp Computer Industries Inc Tel 1 877 902 2979 USA 1 425 223 4311 Eastern Canada 1 905 513 7027 Western Canada 1 604 925 6150 Australia 03 9593 7555 Web http www interworldna com email sales interworldna com Copyright 2006 2007 2011 ITWatchDogs rights reserved part of this book may used reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews For more information write to ITWatchDogs 7600 N Capital of Texas Highway Suite B 345 Austin TX 78731 First Edition May 2006 Second Edition March 2007 Third Edition January 2011 Printed in United States of America Library of Congress Control Number 2006931643 Cullen Gerard L ITWatchDogs Server Room Climate amp Power Monitoring edited by Gerry Cullen p cm Summary How Information Technology managers can use low cost climate and power measuring devices in order to be warned of potentially damaging conditions to computer equipment rooms ISBN 1 59916 051 X 1 Computer Technology Non F
36. Save Changes Unauthenticated User iig 77777 Authentcated Manage anaga Manager Authentication Password Manager Privacy RET Password Trap User gg Trap Authentication TEE Password Trap Privacy Password 66 The Geese can display images from Internet enabled cameras on Sensors or landing page The Geese do not actually handle the image data from the cameras rather they provide a link in the HTML code sent to the user s browser that causes the browser to download the images and include them on the web page This link includes the IP address of the camera and the URL of the image itself To use a camera that is not on our drop down list the user must specify the URL that the camera uses for its snapshot image in addition to the IP address of the camera Cam 1 IP Address 67 Model D Link DC Cam 2 IP Address 67 Model Cam 3 IP Address 67 7 Model D Lin Cam 4 IP Address 67 79 205 94 Model ID NOTE The Geese cannot connect to the type of webcam that connects to a PC using a USB interface The camera must have its own web server built into it NOTE The camera s IP address has to be accessible from the user s computer just as the Goose s address does If the camera has a local address such as 192 168 123 180 the images will only be visible on that local network 67 Next date and time can set manually or address of at le
37. UPS to keep the equipment running in the event of a power failure The problem is that the UPS can only keep the equipment up until its battery is discharged When that happens the equipment in the room goes down without any warning The City Power Monitor provides a way to detect such a power failure The CPM is plugged in to a wall receptacle that is not behind the UPS The CPM triggers an alarm as soon as power fails thus giving the administrator time to bring the equipment down in an orderly fashion The CPM is connected to an analog input or a CCAT If the power is on the CPM output is approximately 4 5 VDC When power fails the output drops to 0 There is a 1 second delay between when the power fails and the CPM output drops to avoid alarming on momentary glitches When power returns the CPM will wait until it has been back for at least 30 seconds before the output signal returns to 4 5 V This delay is to make sure that the Goose notices the failure since the Goose only checks each sensor about every 5 seconds or less if there are a lot of sensors attached to it 47 Analog Sensors Continued Smoke Alarm ITWatchDogs offers a smoke alarm kit that connects a standard smoke alarm to an analog input port on one of the climate monitors This allows the smoke alarm to operate normally while adding the ability to monitor the alarm remotely The standard alarm sounds a buzzer and flashes a light when smoke is detected It runs off
38. and an SNMP trap can be generated to either or both of two different SNMP managers Some Goose models also have audible alarms that can be sounded or relays that can be energized or de energized when an alarm occurs Multiple alarms can be set on any sensor Alarms can be set when a measured value goes either above or below a threshold value A high trip combined with a low trip will generate an alarm if the value is out of the acceptable range Multiple high trips can be used to implement an escalation procedure if conditions continue to deteriorate beyond the initial alarm An example of this would be to send merely a warning e mail to the facilities manager if the temperature in the room reaches 80 degrees but to use the RelayGoose II s control capabilities to begin shutting down equipment or to cause an autodialer to begin calling a list of emergency contacts if the room reaches 90 degrees Most of our climate monitors allow up to 200 separate alarm events to be programmed Another feature of the firmware adds images from up to four IP enabled cameras to a web page The Goose does not actually read the image from the camera and include it in the page it sends to the browser Rather the HTML code for the web page includes a URL which points the browser to the cameras which causes the browser to fetch the images directly from the cameras themselves The standard human interface for any member of the Goose family is thro
39. ast one NTP Network Time Protocol server entered to get the time and date automatically Note that if the unit s clock is not set either manually or from NTP no data will be logged and data to graph will be displayed where graphs would normally appear The Goose can be configured to adjust automatically for daylight savings time if that is desired The user must manually configure the appropriate start and stop dates for DST for their local time zone If DST 15 Disabled then the Goose will not adjust for it Note that NTP servers return GMT if NTP is used the local offset from GMT must be entered Unless of course this Goose 15 installed in the UK The climate monitors have a built in real time clock with a backup so the date and time are kept current for about two weeks if the power fails Set Clock method Manual GMT v GMT to local hh mm 05 00 Month Da Year Hour Minute ec fer for fie 0 23 0 59 NTP primary server 192 43 244 18 129 6 15 28 Sync to server period feo seconds DST is DISABLED Enable DST Disabled v DST Start Fist v Jan v at 00 00727 End ist Sun v Feb v at 00 00 v _Save Changes 68 The Firmware allows for three levels of access to Goose Admin istrator Control and View Only The Administrator has full privileges to change any parameter on the system Control access p
40. ature airflow and humid ity all in one package Because all of these sensors are combined into a single device this combo probe only counts as one device against the maximum of 16 sensor devices allowed on the digital bus The temperature sensor measures from 40 85 40 185 F The airflow sensor reads on a relative scale similar to that used by the WeatherGoose II s internal airflow sensor from 20 still air to 99 rushing air The humidity sensor measures relative humidity 0 100 to within 3 RH accuracy In addition the probe will also report a mathematically calculated dew point the temperature at which humidity will begin condensing out of the air onto any exposed surfaces using the current temperature and humidity readings 44 Digital Sensors continued Analog to Digital Adaptor The was developed to allow analog sensors to be connected to the digital ports on ITWatchDogs climate monitors The CCAT converts an analog signal to a format that can be transmitted over the standard digital bus It allows more analog sensors to be connected than there are analog ports on a given monitor Some climate monitors have no analog inputs but ana log sensors can be connected to them using CCATs Splitters can be used to connect more if necessary Since the Goose firmware sees the CCAT as a digital sensor the total number of CCATS and other digital sensors connec
41. authorized person has entered the room An abrupt drop of the sound level in a room might be due to a fan failure The sound level drops immediately while it might take an hour for the temperature to rise significantly ITWatchDogs understands that cost is a critical issue for most custom ers We work hard to provide the features that are necessary without adding bells and whistles that increase the cost without improving the product Our climate monitor family has a variety of models and options to fit different requirements but all of them are based on a standard hardware and software platform that keeps costs low The Geese are designed to take up very little sp models are highrack mount only 4 inches long by 1 5 inches wide and deep of valuable space in data center rack or in a serv members of the family run off an external 6 VDC power supp wall wart which is supplied along with the units Some models also have Power over Ethernet POE capability so they don t require the external supply to operate largest the Geese have internal sensors most models allow remote sen sors to be connected as well ITWatchDogs climate monitors use standard web server software to display their measurements No special client software is required just a regular web browser Because we use standard protocols like TCP IP and HTTP the Geese can be monitored over a local Ethernet network or they can be connected to the publ
42. d In back up air conditioning condensation trays If the primary tray s drain clogs up very common because of algae growth and the water flows into the back up tray once the back up tray is full the next path for the water may be right onto your server cabinets Place a small weight or clamp on the sensor so it cannot move We have seen some sensor installations where the connecting wire had raised the sensor to 3 off the surface The water would have had to reach 3 in depth before the sensor would signal the alarm Nylon tie wraps are another good way to restrain a wandering water sensor that doesn t want to stay where you want it to Test the sensor Dunk it in a glass of water and see if you get an alarm Wipe it off then place it on a wet napkin and note the reading Make sure the sensor is installed on an insulated surface If the sensor must be placed on a metal surface such as inside an air conditioner s condensation tray place something non conduc tive such as a plastic sheet or a vinyl floor tile underneath the sensor in between the sensor and the galvanized metal as illustrat ed below water weight insulator NS l plastic paper etc air conditioner drip pan metal 14 Smoke Alarms Most buildings have existing smoke alarms The problem is that when they sense smoke there may be no one around to hear it That problem is solved with an ITW smoke alarm which interfaces directly to the climate monitors Man
43. d one of the conductors else the currents in both conductors will cancel each other out A current transformer can only measure alternating current AC It will not work with direct current 48 Analog Sensors Continued 48 VDC Sensor The 48 VDC sensor is designed to monitor battery voltages in tele com rooms and for other applications that need to monitor negative voltages Such systems are also called positive ground systems The sensor measures DC voltag es in range 15 to 60 volts and converts them into voltages between 0 and 5 VDC that can be connected to an input port a climate monitor or the appropriate CCAT By setting appropriate trip points on the monitor s alarm page the user can be notified if the battery is overcharged or discharged in time to take the appropriate action The 48 VDC sensor is accurate to within 590 and draws less than 20 mA from the battery WaterSnake The WaterSnake uses a water sensing cable that anywhere along its length It is usually run all the w the base of the walls That way water on the floor an 50 ft and 100 ft custom lengths are available up to 300 ft long from any source will be detect ed Standard cable The WaterSnake s control box not shown has two relays that are suitable to be connected to the analog inputs of a climate monitor or to an appropriate CCAT One relay opens when water has been detected the other
44. e including water sensors door contacts voltage and current measurements and smoke alarms See the Analog Sensors tab at www itwatchdogs com for more information The input voltage should never be below 0 volts or above 5 volts with respect to terminals The Goose measures the input voltages and displays them on a scale of 0 99 where 0 corresponds to 0 volts and 99 to 5 volts The actual value displayed is an average of several samples to reduce the effect of noise on the measurement The Goose updates the 31 displayed values every few seconds The web page automatically refreshes every 60 seconds but if you hit the refresh button on your browser more often than that you will see the updated values immediately The analog inputs have weak pull ups on them to supply a small amount of loop current for use with dry contacts which makes it possible to use them with devices like door sensors or relays With these types of sensors a reading near 99 means the contact is open and a reading near 0 means it s closed The WeatherGoose II is typical of the entire product line The other members of the family are similar to it they may have a different mix of features come in different packages and or be intended for different budgets and applications than the WeatherGoose II but they are all based on the same core design and share a common user interface making it easy to choose the model that fits your needs for any
45. e II is available that can run using Power over Ethernet just as the MicroGoose can This version is called the RelayGoosePOE II and sells for slightly more than the standard RelayGoose 39 PowerGoose Il The PowerGoose II The PowerGoose II combines the climate monitoring functions of the WeatherGoose II along with a 10 outlet power strip The PowerGoose II measures the same environmental parameters as the standard Weather Goose II unit while also measuring the line voltage and current draw on the power strip sockets The PowerGoose II has the same internal sensors as the Weather Goose temperature humidity airflow and sound and light levels It has four RJ12 connectors for the external digital bus along with three analog dry contact inputs It communicates with the outside world through 10baseT Ethernet and uses the same firmware as all other IT WatchDogs climate monitors The PowerGoose II includes a 10 outlet 120 VAC power strip with the outlets on the back of the unit as shown above The unit is available in two versions a 15 amp model equipped with standard US style NEMA 5 15P power plug and 5 15R sockets and a 20 amp model with a NEMA 5 20P power plug and 5 20R sockets The 5 20R sockets are of the combo type which can accept either 5 15P or 5 20P plugs Besides displaying the environmental parameters this unit measures the true RMS voltage on the power strip as well as the peak voltage It also displa
46. e drained The City Power Monitor is an analog sensor which means it must be connected to one of the analog inputs on a climate monitor If it is used with a monitor such as the MiniGoose which does not have analog inputs or all the analog inputs are being used for other sensors the City Power Monitor can be connected to a device which converts the analog signal and can be plugged into a digital port The City Power Monitor output is one of two states which correspond to off and If power fails and then is restored the monitor output will stay in the off state for 30 seconds This is to make sure than even a momentary failure is logged The 48 VDC monitor is intended to monitor 48 volt positive ground power systems typically found in telecom installations It also connects to an analog port on the climate monitor or an appropriate CCAT device From the voltage level displayed by the monitor the user can tell if a battery bank is discharged charging or overcharged 89 Monitoring Current Monitoring electrical current in a data cen ter can be useful in at least two ways making sure that a power line is not overloaded and the circuit breaker is not about to trip and noticing that some device has failed and stopped drawing power ITWatchDogs provides a clamp on cur rent transformer that measures AC current when connected to an analog input or the appropriate CCAT It can be set to measure 3
47. e v threshold 50 0 Light Level v Alarms Alarm must remain tripped for 5 min before notification Repeat every 10 min v Alarm must remain tripped for min M before notification Repeat every 30 min Alarm must remain tripped for 10 min before notification Repeat every No Repeat Alarm must remain tripped for E mail Traps 0 M before notification Repeat every No Repeat Alarm must remain tripped for before notification Repeat every No Repeat v Air Flow trips if Below v threshold 20 0 Save Changes Add New Alarm after a certain time When an alarm is tripped it can send an email to any combination of up to five addresses It can also send an SNMP trap to one or both of two SNMP managers More than one alarm can be set on any sensor The example above shows two alarms set on the temperature reading The first alarm trips if the temperature goes above 90 F and stays 58 there for at least five minutes After that time an email is sent to the first address on the list and an SNMP trap is sent to the first manager If the alarm is not cleared after 10 minutes another email and another trap will be sent The second alarm will trip immediately if the temperature climbs above 100 F It sends an email to a different address This is an example of an escalation procedure if the temperature exceeds 90 F the first alarm is tripped the Goose emails t
48. ents than a similar building in a Florida summer To simplify our example we will assume the outside temperature 15 72 Since we only have about an hour before equipment is damaged we need to instrument the air conditioner to get the earliest warning A well running air conditioner should have a 20 F difference between the air inlet suction and the output discharge sides of the evaporator coil If the filter begins to clog or the refrigerant starts to leak out knowing the difference between these two temperatures may provide a week s notice that there is a problem Having temperature graphs is important here We recommend measuring the temperature in four locations The first location is at the wall thermostat so we would know what the thermostat saw as it controlled the compressor and fan A locked cover for the thermostat is highly recommended one accidental brush of a cleaning person s vacuum hose is all it takes to turn off the air conditioner The next location is the hottest part of the server cabinet between two pizza box servers is a good start One IT manager uses a hand held infrared thermometer to find the hottest locations then places sensors in those hot spots The hottest locations will be the first temperatures to rise quickly if the cooling system fails The air conditioner should be instrumented in two ways First the inlet temperature should be measured A common way to do this is to tie wrap a Re
49. er head to help catch the water It took ten minutes to figure out how to shut off the sprinkler water Before they shut it down three developers emptied the food chest eight times into trash cans Could have been a disaster 12 We started counting water pipes around server room Water pipes were in the ceiling the walls and under the raised floor slow flood could take an hour maybe but the sprinkler eruption would be catastrophic What we needed was a permanent version of the Styrofoam cooler to catch sprinkler leaks and other overhead leaks The metal tray was simpler to build than we had imagined A local air conditioning sheet metal shop made two trays with hangar brackets and gt drains for less than 150 We punched pencil sized holes in the acoustic tile ceiling and hung the catch trays over the cabinets The drain was a real problem The maintenance guy for the building helped us route the garden house to a sink drain on the first floor Water Sensors Most water sensors measure the difference between the conductivity of air and the conductivity of water ITW water sensors have a low voltage applied to four metal brads on a plastic case When the water touches the brads it completes the circuit and the current begins to flow If the metal brads are touching a surface such as a concrete floor the graphs will show a decrease from reading 99 dry no current flow to 80 damp to 55 full conductivity
50. er reappears and the complaints cease You go nuts This happens every week You move stuff to different servers you drive everyone crazy by pinging the gear every minute You have flaky gear He obviously spoke from experience The second technician added If we have a performance guarantee in our maintenance contract we can insist on replacing our gear if the room temperature goes above 95 F for more than an hour Once gear gets flaky it can drive our costs up and our reputations down Removing Taking floor heater example one step further let s cool room with a dedicated air conditioner Note the word dedicated many legacy server rooms use existing the building s existing air conditioning system which adds more complexity because the heat load in other rooms may change affecting the air conditioner s performance common example of this is when an office copier is added to an office adjacent to the server room A large copier can produce 1 000 watts of heat when in operation which the building air conditioner has to remove 15 000 watts of heat needs two tons of air conditioning to remove See calculations in Appendix To put this into perspective a two ton air conditioner will cool a three bedroom home to 72 F in an Arizona summer Added to this calculation is the external temperature Hot walls require air conditioning A stand alone building in a Michigan winter has different cooling requirem
51. ermits the user to change anything except the parameters on the Config page and the View Only account cannot change anything ITWatchDogs recommends that you set at least an Administrator password otherwise some unauthorized person could change something important perhaps the network parame ters If those are changed the Goose can no longer be accessed over the network The only way to recover would be to push the reset button described earlier which of course requires physical access to the Goose NOTE 1 If Account currently has a password leaving Old Password blank results in no changes to that account NOTE 2 Administrator password may be used in the Old Password field of any account NOTE 3 If setting New Password to blank Account Name must also blank NOTE 4 If New Password is not blank Account Name must not be blank Administrator Account Name blank all access is granted without password Old Password New Password New Password Again again to confirm Warning Record your password Loss of password may require 48 hours to recover Control Account Name If blank Control and View Only access is granted without password Old Password New Password New Password Again again to confirm Waming Record your password Loss of password may require 48 hours to recover View Only Account Name If blank View access is granted without a password Old Password New Password New Password Again EUX
52. given installation In the next chapter we ll discuss those other members of the family concentrating on how they differ from the WeatherGoose II 32 Chapter 4 Other Climate Monitors 33 Other Climate Monitors The WeatherGoose II Family includes other climate monitors that offer additional features different form factors and are intended for different budgets and applications Other models of the family include at this writing 1 2 The SuperGoose The MiniGoose II The MiniGooseXP II The MicroGoose The Relay Goose II The RelayGoosePOE II The PowerGoose II 34 The SuperGoose Il SuperGoose II The SuperGoose II adds two features to the WeatherGoose II A 2 line by 8 character LCD display and an audible alarm horn The LCD can be configured to display all the available measurements or just the measure ments that have exceeded their alarm thresholds LCD Display Off button Otherwise the SuperGoose II is similar to the WeatherGoose II It is the same size 1U high by 19 wide and has the same internal temperature humidity airflow light and sound sensors It has 5 RJ12 jacks for external digital sensors and three ports for analog sensors or dry contact switches Any alarm can be configured to sound the horn when it trips along with sending emails and SNMP traps as they do on the other members of the ITWatchDogs climate monitor family The h
53. he first responder If he fails to respond and the problem gets even worse the Goose will notify another person Emails can be sent to any combination of five different addresses Additional alarms can be added by clicking the Add New Alarm button at the bottom of the page As mentioned before multiple alarms can be set on the same sensor Up to 200 alarm events can be set at any given time 59 Data Logging This page allows the user to control the data log and to configure a detailed graph of the logged data The log can be configured to store data from any or all of the sensors The data is logged in a first in first out manner which is to say that once the log is full the oldest data is replaced by the newest data The length of time covered by the log depends on how many sensors are chosen to be logged The Goose calculates how long that time is based on the number of sensors and measurements to be logged vs the amount of memory available and displays it on the page Logging 78 06 F 47 56 19 F 31 30 Sound Level 25 Analog 1 99 Analog 2 99 99 Ses Reset Logs Click here to download CSV log data 60 The user can select exactly what measurements are logged Goose hardware reads all the sensors approximately once every 5 seconds Log entries however are made approximately every 60 seconds In normal mode the value logged is the most recent reading This is appropriate if
54. ic Internet and monitored from anywhere on 21 Net The monitors have an SNMP agent already built in to firmware so they can be accessed using popular network management tools such as HP OpenView What sUp Gold or LoriotPro SuperGoose II SuperGoose v3 3 4 2003 2009 22 members of climate monitor family keep logs of the measure ments they make user selects internal and external sensors to be logged periodically The number of sensors selected affects the length of time that the log can cover but in most cases data can be logged for days or weeks Data from the log can be downloaded to a PC in Separated Value CSV format Most spreadsheet programs Excel can read CSV directly so the data can be analyzed using the spreadsheet s tools A spreadsheet can also draw detailed graphs of the data or of any part of it The Goose will draw a graph showing any combination of the sensors that you want to see You can select the time scale from 15 minutes to one month The graph is drawn from the data available in the log The user can determine which sensors are selected to graph but the data in the log remains unchanged SuperGoose II Demo Mode SuperGoose II v3 3 4 Update Graph Note Measurements selected on this page will scroll on the LCD display Time Range 7 Days v
55. iction 2 Electronics and Electrical Technology Non Fiction 3 Data communications Technology Non Fiction 2006931643 Non Fict Cover art by Layne Lundstrom 1st Printing 2006 www itwatchdogs com NetBotz is a trademark of NetBotz Inc Table of Contents Iiigere V ordror MED The 160 000 Sunday COOK EL 1 The Cost of the 2 Cost of Replacement Equirpmeft etre tit 2 Cost or Re installing Som Ate nie 3 Chapter 1 Monitoring Techniques 5 Things That uiia anti 6 The Five Fundamental Threats 6 Heat Created by de 6 Temperature Inside the Equipment Case ec ottima 8 Removing the Heat aine 9 How UPS Helps Cook the 11 Hot Spots Temperature Variations 11 Backup Air 12 Water is a am eee no mar 12 Water 13 Installation Rules for Water 0 5 14 Smoke TIENS uoi ocio 15 Power How to Keep Juice On 15 Current Transformer S uoo 16 Dual scere 17 Power Trends Seen m Graphiste 17 Door 18 Well Monitored Server Room eee 18 Appendix How Fast Will a Server Room Heat Up
56. iece of equipment replaced with a floor heater A typical PC uses about 300 to 400 watts not including the monitor For the sake of easy multiplica tion let s say your server room has 30 devic es each consuming 500 watts for a total of 15 000 watts A typical server produces about the same heat as a small floor heater If that number doesn t seem impressive enough try visualizing 30 floor heaters in the room Turn all the heaters on and come back in 30 minutes How hot would the room be Depending on the room s size and insulation the temperature Non could rise 10 F in less than 30 min Damage utes In an hour the room could be over 100 Heat Rise deg F 115 110 105 95 90 85 Computer gear converts almost all the electricity into heat There is Damage Begins Shutdowns 80 Operation no water pumped or logs sawed m work other than the internal fans 65 8307 500 and the disk head arms 9090 of the electricity converts to heat A heat gain calculation showed that the internal temperature of the room would increase about 15 F every thirty minutes The room rapidly becomes an oven In most legacy server rooms the air conditioning system has no margin for error at best most legacy air conditioners can barely cope with removing the internally generated heat There is small or no performance margin If the air conditioning partially failed the room will heat up and the e
57. internal sensor readings since the last time the log was cleared The screen shot above is from a Goose whose log was cleared about 35 days ago Since this example is taken from a WeatherGoose II there are internal temperature humidity light and sound levels and airflow sensors The temperature can be displayed in Fahrenheit or Celsius Relative humidity is displayed as a percentage The airflow rate as well as light and sound levels are given as relative values from 0 100 56 If external digital sensors are connected to Goose additional frames appear below the internal sensors frame In this example an ITWatchDogs Remote Temperature Humidity Airflow sensor probe has been attached to the WeatherGoose i o C 27 88 B 22 205 100 rushing 3290 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 When additional external sensors are attached each one gets its own frame At this writing up to 16 external digital sensors can be attached to one climate monitor 57 Alarms Alarm thresholds are set on alarms tab Alarms can be set on any sensor alarm can be set to trip if the value goes above a specified threshold or below it It can be set to trip immediately or after some specified delay It can also be set to repeat the if alarm hasn t been cleared trips if Above v threshold 90 0 Temperature 1 trips if Above v threshold 1000 Relative Humidity v trips if Abov
58. ipment on one side of the room might be running hot while equipment on the other side is well within normal limits and you might never know until it s too late Backup Air Conditioners From a peace of mind perspective the most secure method of pre venting a meltdown is to have a backup air conditioning system that is completely separate from the primary system Whether a stand alone portable unit or a duplicate in ceiling machine this is a practical way to keep equipment in operation while the primary air conditioner is being repaired One user reported he had installed a backup cooling system from a contractor built from used components for 5 000 including installation We mentioned this to a local IT manager and she said A backup air conditioning system which I still don t have is next on my budget list By the way you re right about the UPS helping cook your gear I hadn t thought about that until you mentioned it Water is Everywhere One IT manager we spoke to mentioned he had survived a fire protection sprinkler accidental turn on incident He tells about his experi ence with water sprinkler just turned itself on Don t know why A software guy walked in right as the sprinkler started spraying down on a line of five server cabinets A maintenance guy found a big Styrofoam food cooler in a closet and climbed up on a chair to place it directly under the sprinkler head He wrapped his sweater around the sprinkl
59. ital sensors connect to the external digital bus connec tors available on most of the climate monitors Up to 16 digital sensors can be connected at one time splitters are available for monitors that have fewer than 16 of the RJ12 Digital Sensor Bus connectors Note this bus is a proprietary ITWatchDogs design and is not compatible with any sensors from other companies It allows digital sensors to be connected to climate monitors hundreds of feet away from the sensors The total length of all the digital sensor cables attached to one climate monitor cannot exceed 600 feet 180 meters For example one sensor can be attached to a monitor with 600 feet of cable or two sensors with 300 foot cables can be attached to the same monitor or four sensors with 150 foot cables etc Digital remote sensors available from ITWatchDogs include tempera ture only sensors and temperature humidity airflow probes ITWatch Dogs also offers an accessory the CCAT that can adapt analog sensors to the digital bus for climate monitors which lack analog connections or for those users who need to add more analog sensors than their particular model of climate monitor provides for Many of ITWatchDogs climate monitors have connectors for analog sensors ITWatchDogs offers analog sensors that can detect water on the floor alert you when a cabinet door is opened detect AC line power failures and measure AC current draw to list a few Any device whose output
60. just in case he said half heartedly I called an IT friend at another company and told him what happened 1 The heat adds up you have heat from all the gear plus heat dumping in from the ceiling grill he answered bet it was over 110 degrees in less than six hours Inside the equipment cases it was over 130 degrees Your gear is scrap not worth repairing He gave me no hope He asked what kind of software was on the equipment Our internal web and data servers E mail the CRM stuff and the development guys files I answered Everything except the corporate web site The corporate web site was hosted in New Jersey Tough deal there he counseled Replacing the hardware will take a week or more Installing the software could take a month What if we have back up disks I asked hopefully Unless you have the same gear coming in as you burned up there will be incompatibility problems How old was the gear Maybe five years old The depth of the problem was expanding We had bought some of the equipment from the last start up company occupy ing the building We had not installed much of the software ourselves We probably didn t have all the CDs Heaven knew where all the license codes lived IT gear more than five years old is considered geriatric equipment Probably no parts were available and they were certainly long out of warranty It would be a fresh start on the e
61. mote Temperature Sensor to the air inlet grill in the In same manner attach sensor to air conditioning output grill The difference between these two readings reflects the efficiency of the unit Some IT managers particularly in the southern states recommend monitoring the outside ambient temperature as well in order to see what the building was subjected to Since the air conditioner is vital experienced IT managers know that an emergency monitoring and repair plan is essential First place multiple personnel on the alert list If somebody is on vacation and someone is always on vacation or sick when alarms come in the backup personnel will get the alarm Every IT manager who has lived through an air conditioning failure agrees that a service contract with a reliable A C repair company with backup personnel must be established The repair service must have 24 hour service One IT manager even goes so far as to keep spare parts for his air conditioning systems in house Many IT managers recommend monthly reviews of temperature logs downloaded into a spreadsheet for analysis Many things can happen during weekends and holidays and the logs will show if the room has undergone a spike in temperature Monthly testing of temperature sensors such as heating them with a hair dryer to deliberately trip the alarm is also highly recommended The logic behind all these recommendations is to get the earliest warning p
62. nd which displays open or closed on the web page and a generic analog model which displays a 0 5 VDC input as a reading from 00 99 just like the WeatherGoose s internal analog inputs CCAT s come standard with either a 12 ft 3 7 M or 25 ft 7 6 M cable 45 Analog Sensors ITWatchDogs supplies a full line of analog sensors to go with the WeatherGoose II family climate monitors These can either be connected directly into the analog inputs of the climate monitors that have them or to CCATs which convert the outputs to digital format The exact number of built in analog inputs and the style of connector used varies between models although most models of the WeatherGoose II family provide three such inputs more details can be found in the previous section on the various climate monitor models The analog sensor line includes 1 water leak monitor 2 A door contact switch to determine if a door is open or closed 3 A sensor that detects incoming power blackouts City Power Monitor 4 A smoke alarm 5 A current transformer to measure AC current 6 A sensor that monitors positive ground 48 VDC voltage levels for telecom applications 7 more sophisticated water leak detector Water Snake that watches for leaks anywhere along a cable allowing an large area to be monitored instead of just a single point Water Sensor The water sensor like all the other sensors is designed t
63. ng providers of server room monitoring equipment Chapter 1 Monitoring Techniques Things That Gear Protecting existing server rooms is difficult because most legacy server rooms are dissimilar and the threats are multiple One tried and true configuration may not work in another server room This chapter will show a variety of methods to monitor server rooms that have proved effective in many years of instrumenting server rooms The five fundamental threats U Heat both inside and outside U Water Fire and smoke U Power Failure U Intrusion Heat Created by Equipment Almost all the electricity consumed by computer equipment is con verted to heat One feature of heat is its desire to quickly distribute itself With multiple cabinets and dozens of fans the heat becomes uniform through the room The room feels hot but there is no glowing stove to demonstrate the amount of heat entering the room If you moved around with a hand held thermometer you would see hot spots some more than ten degrees above the average temperature 1000W Heater Server cabinets full of floor heaters an illustration to emphasize graphically how much heat is produced in a typical server room 6 Imagine equipment replaced by floor heaters the kind found under almost any desk in Nebraska A typical heater produces 500 watts and can easily take the edge off a cold cubicle Now imagine each p
64. nt worked well but it ended when a spider took the term web server a bit too literally and built his web inside the MiniGoose s case which eventually corroded some of the internal connections At least one telecommunications company in South America has placed several WeatherGoose units in the equipment rooms of remote communications towers to help them make sure the backup batteries are being properly charged and serviced An emergency services organiza tion in the northeastern U S is using a WeatherGoose to remotely monitor the fuel levels in an LPG storage tank While the WeatherGoose units may have originally been designed with server rooms and data centers in mind our customers are always finding new and interesting uses for them 25 The ITWatchDogs Climate Monitor Family The ITWatchDogs Climate Monitor Family includes 1 2 WeatherGoose II the flagship of family SuperGoose II Similar to the WeatherGoose II but with an LCD display and an audible alarm horn included MiniGoose II WeatherGoose functionality in a smaller case x 1 5 x 1 57 with a single digital sensor port MiniGooseXP II A MiniGoose with a full array of 16 digital sensor ports and three analog ports MicroGoose The least expensive member with only temperature and humidity sensors The MicroGoose can run off the standard external power supply or off Power over Ethernet POE RelayGoose II Similar to the Super
65. o E mail Address 1 fon itwatchdogscom To E mail Address 2 To E mail Address 3 To E mail Address 4 J To E mail Address 5 ay PoPa Sener Tr POP3 Port 0 9 9 9 Leaving the POP3 Server blank with the Usemame Password filled in enables ESMTP TLS No Server and no Usemame Password enables no authentication System status reports can be emailed to each address at specified intervals or at a specified time on a specified day of the week Three different time schedules can be set up Each report can go to any or all of the five email addresses 65 Further down Monitoring sub page Goose may to send a status email to any or all of the specified email addresses A message can be sent from every hour up to every 4 hours or on a specific day of the week the Geese include an SNMP Simple Network Management Protocol agent The WeatherGoose family supports SNMP v1 v2c and vl is the standard SNMP v2c is an improved version and SNMP v3 adds security features such as authentication and encryption The trap addresses here are the addresses that SNMP traps can be sent to when an alarm trips SNMP Service Enabled v Read Community pubie Listen port for GET fier Trap Community private 0 Write Community 4 Trap Type Vi Trap Trap IP Address port 1 Trap IP Address port 2 _
66. o be connect ed to one of the analog input ports on a climate monitor The water sensor has four metal brads on the bottom It works by measuring the resistance between brads If the surface it s sitting on 4 ET E is dry the resistance will be high and the sensor will read 99 If the sensor is in a pool E of water resistance will be low and it will read around 50 or lower Readings between 99 and 50 indicate increasing dampness under the sensor The water sensor must never be placed on a metal or otherwise conductive floor or it will give inaccurate readings Several water sensors can be placed around a room and connected in parallel to the same numbered terminal If this is done the climate monitor will raise an alarm when any one of the sensors detects water The water sensor should be connected to the climate monitor by 22 or 46 Analog Sensors Continued Door Contact Monitor The door contact monitor uses a magnetic switch to determine if a door is open or po mounted on the door jamb or some other fixa mounted on door in such way that R ZG 7 in sei inch 2 5 cm of the switch body when gt dosi switch is wired normally closed the switch is closed when the door is closed The Door Contact Monitor is usually connected using 24 AWG wire Runs up to 100 feet 30 M are common City Power Monitor Most server rooms have uninterruptible power supplys
67. o reinstall the software I showed my spreadsheet around and most folks thought the cost would be twice that but come back in two weeks and we ll have a better idea Nobody felt like talking about the meltdown much less the IT guys who had become almost invisible on at least a month getting back up unless you have folks trained on those enterprise size systems in house You ll be feeding CDs into those replacement machines for weeks Just rewriting the router tables will take a couple of days Cost of Re installing Software Device Apps Days to Reinstall Total Cost 1000 day Routers 4 5 5 000 Servers 30 40 40 000 Switch 2 5 5 000 UPS 2 2 2 000 Total 52 000 Nobody ratted on who set the thermostat but we were all under suspicion I asked various technical staffers who had lost some computer capabil ity when the room melted down how much time we lost Weeks easily they said I felt bad about the melt down I had been there that winter Saturday when one of us had jammed the thermostat setting to the highest setting 95 degrees The heaters must have fully kicked in after we left We froze most of the day and forgot about the thermostat setting 3 The thermostat cost 50 I never got my PowerPoints back If I ever built a server room I knew this wasn t going to happen to me Comments by Gerry Cullen who participated in the meltdown He left Acuity to found NetBotz and later ITWatchDogs Both are leadi
68. on Number A set of tabs appear on the left side of each page These are links to the other pages The PDA Phone button below the tabs changes the display to a sparse view of the first page Sensors This allows a user to check on the current readings from all the sensors using a device with a small screen and perhaps a slow data link The MIB button downloads the information that a SNMP Simple Network Management Protocol Manager needs in order to monitor this device The XML button allows downloading the current readings in XML eXtensible Markup Language format Certain useful management programs can read data in this format Each page has a footer that shows information about this particular Goose so the user can keep track of multiple Geese in a system These values are set on the Config gt Admin page which is described later Sensors When the user enters address of a WeatherGoose II family member into his browser the first page displayed is the Sensors page Sensors emperature 28 74 C Blhesenas 36 Blocs 14 O dark 100 bright ai row 22 20 stil 100 rushing Bos Level 0 O quiet 99 loud Boos 99 0 0 99 5v Be Analog Sensor 99 0 0 99 5v Bn Andog 0 0 99 5v The first part of the sensors page shows the readings from all of the internal sensors as well as a graph of all the available data This graph cannot be reconfigured it always shows all the
69. onnected to the strip was considerably less Many IT managers set a policy to not exceed 6090 of a power strip s rated capacity A 20 amp power strip for example would be restricted to having no more than 12 amps worth of load connected to it in normal operation The hard part is learning how much current is going into the strip An electrician can measure the draw of each power strip by powering down the existing power strip and inserting a break out box or by using a 15 hand held clamp on ammeter But usefulness of these measurements is usually short lived because equipment tends to migrate from cabinet to cabinet and new equipment is always being added If the breaker trips a trip to the server room is needed to reset the breakers and the IT manager has to determine why the breakers tripped Usually this is not easy There are two ways to monitor current in existing power systems Current Transformers and In line Current Meters Current Transformers A current transformer CT surrounds a single alternating current carrying wire and converts the current into a 0 5 VDC signal suitable for input to a WeatherGoose analog sensor jack The CT supplied by ITW can be selected for 30 60 or 120 amp scales with a slide switch The most common place to mount a CT is around one of the wires entering or leaving the breaker box It cannot be used around power cords unless a single power conductor is extracted from the cable or else
70. ormation Server Name or IP Address 67 79 205 84 Connection HTTPS Server 80 Server Admin Log In User Server Admin Log In Password Server Description Owi MicroGoose Climate History Information Click here to download server s sensor data Summary First Timestamp Records Found Last Timestamp 05 18 2010 05 50 01 20490 05 25 2010 15 14 57 Viewing Details From Prev Record 05 25 2010 15 14 57 Next Record Show Different Time Record Metadata Status OK Timestamp 05 25 2010 15 14 57 Timeout 30 seconds The climate history information is shown lower on the page It is possible here to download all the logged data from the climate monitor in comma separated value CSV format Most popular spreadsheet tools can read this format so they can be used to further analyze the data It is also possible to review the data in WatchDog Console s SQL database from this page The first and last timestamps are listed By default the data with the latest timestamp is shown including the camera images Data and images from any date time in the database be accessed by entering the desired date and time in the Show Different Time field 79 The sensor values and camera images from selected date and time are shown at the bottom of the page Again the default is to show the record with the latest timestamp but any record in the database can be accessed by ente
71. orn will stop either when the alarm condition is resolved or when Off button on the front panel is pushed 35 The MiniGoose Il The MiniGoose II has most of the WeatherGoose 5 functionality in a small er case 4 x 1 5 x 1 5 It has the same 10baseT Ethernet jack as the rest of family and it runs the same firmware See the chapter on the WeatherGoose II Family Firmware Due to its small size the MiniGoose II has only one internal temper ature sensor and only a single RJ 12 jack for external Digital Bus sensors although external splitters are available to expand the single connection into five or sixteen external ports The 16 port version is shown below The same restriction of 600 total feet 180m of cable connecting all the digital sensors to the MiniGoose II applies as it does to all the other family members The MiniGoose II also runs off an external 6 VDC power supply A suitable wall transformer supply that runs off 100 240 50 60 Hz is supplied with the unit The MiniGoose II does not have any analog dry contact inputs built in However a peripheral called the is available that interfaces analog and dry contact sensors to the digital bus See the chapter on Digital Sensors for details The MiniGoose Splitter 16 Port Version 36 MiniGooseXP The MiniGooseXP II is an expanded version of the MiniGoose II de signed to fit into a 10 space
72. ossible High temperatures in the spaces between the pizza box servers could indicate a problem once the air around the wall thermostat or the A C inlet gets hot it may already be too late to save your equipment Remote temperature sensors can have wire runs of hundreds of feet One well placed temperature sensor can deliver an hour s early warn ing enough time to get a repair technician on site 10 How UPS Helps Cook Gear Ironically a UPS unit can help fry your equipment While a UPS can keep the server equipment running when main power fails it doesn t keep the air conditioners going While keeping the equipment running during a power failure may make the users happy it also means that the gear will keep making tons of heat As we saw before in as little as one or two hours the equipment could fry itself into scrap If main power fails for more than a few minutes the safest thing for the server room equipment would be to shut each down until the air conditioning is restored The servers should be gracefully shut down programs exited files closed and the machines powered off While an hour or two without service may frustrate your users just imagine how much worse it will be if your system is off line for days or weeks because you had to re build the entire server room after the equipment cooks itself Hot Spots Temperature Variations When the thermostat on the wall reads 72 F the natural tendency of most people is
73. perature humidity dew point airflow sensor is available Measuring airflow helps detect fans that are failing or have failed Multiple external airflow sensors will illustrate how the A C vents are 88 distributing air across room and help you put most air in the hottest spot Note the airflow sensors sold by ITWatchDogs for use with our monitoring systems are not calibrated in cubic feet per minute or any similar standard units instead the sensors simply report a number from 20 to 99 where 20 means very still air and 99 means very fast moving air A true CFM measurement is difficult to achieve without resorting to a mechanical measuring device which would not only increase the cost and complexity of the sensor but would add its own periodic maintenance and long term reliability issues to those of the fans you re trying to monitor Alarms can be set on the airflow sensors in the same way as for any other sensor attached to a climate monitor Monitoring Voltages ITWatchDogs offers two voltage Monitor and the 48 VDC Monitor The Cif to monitor the voltage provided by the local poWes any It monitors 100 to 240 volt AC power lines and provides a warning if the p It is often used in situations where the gear is behind a UPS but someone needs to be notified when a power failure leaves the UPS running on battery power The power must be restored or the servers must shut down gracefully before the UPS batteries ar
74. pi pase en E DUUM E RUE 48 48e utu udis ud pedi qe nee 48 m RIP n e HET 49 Water naked inside 49 Chapter 6 Climate Monitor Family FIM WANG 50 Climate Monitor Family Fini ware 51 56 Alarms PAG MC 58 Data pied edd eda eue EM este 60 Display T keie 62 Config 63 Configuring Network done 64 Mo onitoring Confrpuratiofi i oii EI bibe 65 Chapter 7 WatchDog Console 72 WatchDog CODSOIB eei tu Red nn 73 Console Hom Page dense abe tu pb ite ua 74 Status en 76 Eu S 77 Servers Page 78 OBS Pape T 81 Firmware es 82 Alarms e OO 83 SE AOR Mm 84 SUMMA de 84 Chapter 8 Wrap Up 85 Monitoring Temperature nn nent 87 Monitoring R H and Dew POL eco eee 88 Monitoring oC este 88 Monitoring Voltages sniene seana 89 Monitorin Current sser 90 Monitoring POW OU 90 Monitoring Light and Sound Levels lora ss 90 Smoke Alarm Door Sensor and Water Alarms 91 Output Sn HO 92 OTIC U
75. quipment list The Cost of the Meltdown I asked the lead software developer what was in the room and he gave me a thumbnail list There were far more machines in the room than I recalled even though the room had hall windows I added up his guess at what was lost Over 100 000 not counting the time needed to re order the gear The IT guys had a sizable project Cost of Replacement Equipment Device Quantity Cost Total Routers 4 6 000 24 000 Servers 8 10 000 580 000 Switches 2 1 000 2 000 UPS 2 1 000 2 000 Total 108 000 2 That s what equipment replacement is going to cost You have to reload the application software You do have the CDs around the shop right I answered that we must have them somewhere but I recalled we had a complex looking magnetic tape backup system in the room with the equipment I wondered if the back up unit got fried along with the gear The application software is on the back up tapes No and 1 it is it s probably an old version Your guys will probably first reload the Exchange Mail Server and then work on the Pivotal CRM system The developers can load their own stuff back the employee data files should be on the back up tapes I wondered if anyone had ever tried a backup My PowerPoints were on one of the disks stacked in the hallway I had two weeks of work in those slides Since I didn t know salaries for anyone except myself I used consul tant prices t
76. quipment s maximum operating temperature could be exceeded within only a few hours If the air conditioner fails completely the room could be in melt down condition in as little as an hour ruining the equipment Temperature Inside the Equipment Case At a recent trade show two Cisco certified CCIE network mainte nance technicians commented on the importance of keeping the equipment within operating temperatures Here are their remarks t s more critical than many IT guys think said the first technician A typical rack mounted device can run about 20 degrees hotter inside the unit than the outside temperature We told them about our melt 70 F server room ambient down worries gt 80 F inside the blade server Happens lot Heat is the big killer If the gear doesn t fail outright it gets flaky server fails around 115 F internal What s flaky we asked Some of the integrated circuits become intermittent because of the over temperature operation The silicon junctions in the integrated cir cuits can t dissipate the heat and they become unreliable even after the gear cools down You now have unpredictable equipment For example a dependable server suddenly becomes unavailable You can t see the site or read a disk file Somebody gets mad and starts calling you saying the server s down so you go racing around looking for server problems Just as suddenly the serv
77. r interface in response to our customers feedback By the time you read this book there may be several differences between the inter face and behavior shown here in these pages and the actual behavior of the units being shipped This chapter should be treated primarily as an overview and general introduction to the WeatherGoose climate monitoring system rather than a model or version specific user manual Users should also check our web site at www itwatchdogs com periodically to see if a new release is available if so you can download the new firmware release to your PC then install it into the unit Firmware updates can be done straight from the unit s configuration web page via your PC s web browser without any need for a separate update or installation pro gram and the process uses ITWatchDogs patented technolo to insure that the Goose s program memory will not be corrupted if an upload fails for any reason If a failure occurs during uploading of the new firmware the Goose will simply discard the failed upload and keep running using the old version of the firmware The same firmware package runs on all the Geese At power up it automatically recognizes which model of Goose it s running on and configures itself accordingly It identifies which internal and external sensors are connected and initializes them and displays the appropriate web pages and controls 51 The standard human interface to a Goose is through a set
78. re configured The sensors that have tripped an alarm are highlighted 75 Status Page A Status page shows real time data for a given sensor measurement This way the user can look at all the temperature sensors or all the airflow sensors voltage current light level etc Any measurement can be selected from a drop down list at the top of the page The list of possible measure ments is determined automatically based on what units WatchDog Con sole knows about An icon representing the sensor s host device is shown along with user defined friendly name that was given to the device that the sensor is attached to Clicking on a device name will take the user to that device s home page Home Status Graph Servers Logs Firmware Alarms Help Config Sensor Status Select Sensor Temperature Not Tripped 88 Tripped Almost Tripped Sensor Name Temperature F a Temperature Ru Temperature Sensor pepe 84 lt MiniGoose 2 Digi MiniGoose 163 a Temperature F g MniGoose 183 Temperature F 1 Og MiniGoose 163 The sensors are color coded to highlight alarm conditions Sensors that are unplugged are shown as unavailable The list can be sorted by sensor name or value by clicking on the corresponding header Clicking twice on the same header changes the ordering from ascending to descending or vice versa 76 The Graph page displays
79. ring the desired date and time If there is no record from that exact time the closest time will be shown Server Attributes Host MicroGoose Address 57 79 205 Address Backup Name MicroGoose Version CB 631 PVersion 1 00 Mac Address 00 34 67 78 90 51 Company LT Watchdogs Inc Company URL http www itwatchdogs com Support Email support itwatchdogs com Support Phone 512 257 1462 Buzzer True Temp Unit Cameras 57 79 205 91 67 79 205 94 05 25 2010 15 14 34 05 25 2010 15 14 50 05 25 2010 15 14 42 Device 01FA5E73100000DD Name Type Available Index MicroGoose uGoos True 0 Trip Trip cm Key Value Name Min Max Type Type Threshold Notification TempF 78 27 Temperature 40 25482 High 74 0 SNMPTrap0 SNMPTrap1 Low 60 Email0 Emaill High 88 0 Emailt Humidity 40 Relative Humidity 0 99 2 DewPtF 51 97 Dew Point 40 25482 80 5 The Logs page allows user to download all the available logs in a consolidated format WatchDog Console currently provides two data logs for downloading One is a log of all sensor data for all servers currently in the database The second is the event log which contains information and errors pertaining to various WatchDog Console functions such as the web server server refreshes firmware updates and alarm updates Home Status Graph Servers Logs Firmware Alarms Help
80. sures temperature relative humidity airflow and calculated dewpoint all in one device Relative humidity is displayed as a number from 0 to 100 Monitoring humidity is important for two rea 2 sons Excessively high humidity especially if ac f NS HD companied by a drop in temperature can cause N water to condense inside electronic equipment and cause electrical shorts On the other hand if the humidity is too low static electricity charges can quickly build up on moving surfaces or person nel causing high voltage discharges which can disrupt or damage sensi tive electronic equipment In either case it is important that humidity be monitored and that someone notified when it is either too high or too low Dew point is related to relative humidity Given the current relative humidity the dew point is the temperature at which condensation will begin If the relative humidity is high the dew point is close to the current temperature If the relative humidity is low the dew point is much lower than the current temperature ITWatchDogs monitors measure humidity and dew point display their current values on a web page and log and graph previous values Alarms can be set to trip when either value exceeds thresholds that the user sets and these alarms behave the same way alarms on any other sensor does Monitoring Airflow Some of the climate monitors also have internal airflow sensors and an external tem
81. t inputs such as or switches WeatherGoose II devices can include references to supported IP enabled cameras on the web page which causes the browser to display still images from the cameras on the WeatherGoose page Up to four camer as can be displayed at once Contact ITWatchDogs for the list of cameras that are currently supported 24 Other Applications ITWatchDogs climate monitor family was developed to monitor environmental conditions in server rooms but Geese are used for many other applications Several schools are using the WeatherGoose II device and some external temperature sensors to monitor and log the temperature in their cafeterias walk in refrigerators If the temperature gets too high the Goose alerts the maintenance people day or night These schools are also able to use the temperature logs to document that the temperature has remained within the mandated safe limits for food storage A university lab used a Goose in a botany experiment to determine the effect of longer or shorter days on certain plants The Goose gave them a log of light levels over time as well as generating an alarm if someone turned the lights on when they were supposed to be off Although we don t recommend using WeatherGoose II family outdoors one of our customers used a MiniGoose to monitor temperature and humidity in a livestock enclosure as part of an experiment to see how these quantities affected his animals The experime
82. ted to a single Goose must be 16 or less Likewise the length of the connecting cable must be included when calculating the total length of all digital cables used which as has been noted before cannot exceed 600 feet 183 meters Note that the wiring between the CCAT and the analog sensor does not count as part of the 600 ft limit only the digital connection from CCAT to climate monitor counts If an analog sensor must be tens or hundreds of feet from a climate monitor a CCAT can be used to digitize the reading near the sensor instead of at the monitor This arrangement will reduce the noise on the measurement that may encountered in an electrically noisy room since the digital bus is much more noise resistant than an analog connection Each CCAT is designed to work with a specific analog sensor ITWatchDogs offers CCAT versions that work with the water detector smoke detector City Power Monitor and others see the Analog Sensor section starting on the next page Each version identifies itself to the climate monitor it s connected to so the correct device name will show up on the web pages There are also two models of generic CCAT avail able for use with 3rd party sensors or specialized equipment which don t have a matching CCAT model examples of this would include weight transducers relay contacts from generator or UPS status panels gas detectors etc a generic digital model intended for use with dry contact switches a
83. them to connect to each unit individually ITWatchDogs WatchDog Console software provides way to monitor multiple climate monitors using a single web interface At this writing up to 200 climate monitors can be controlled from a single web interface WatchDog Console runs as a service under Windows Server 2003 and 2008 and Windows XP Windows Vista and Windows 7 The WatchDog Console server can be accessed from a standard web browser WatchDog Console polls the units and collects sensor measurements from each one The user can see an overview of conditions everywhere in the network Similar sensors from multiple units can be presented on the same graph The same alarm can be set on multiple units at one time Firmware updates can be loaded to several units at one time Thumbnail images from cameras connected to different units can be viewed on the same page The data is stored in an SQL database It can be retrieved for offline analysis by any SQL compatible tools 73 Below is an example Home Page from WatchDog Console utility In this case the program is monitoring five different climate monitors Each one is shown with an image from an associated webcam along with the sensors readings from that unit The user can elect to show all the sensor readings or only those that have tripped alarms The camera images can be shown or omitted Home Status Graph Servers Logs Firmware
84. til it is either pushed out by new data or Reset Logs is selected regardless of whether you choose to view it on the log or not 61 Display Options This page controls how the other pages look Various date formats can be selected and temperatures displayed in Fahrenheit or Celsius The default language can be set as well There are several different page layouts available The one shown here is Contemporary but the user can also select a Classic design that looks like the pages from the WeatherGoose I family a feature that users of our older products may appreciate or a minimal graphics design that will download faster and use less bandwidth for users with slow or data limited connections This page allows the user to set friendly names for the Goose and for each sensor i e names that help identify each sensor as something more descriptive than just Temperature or Light Level Date Format 150 8601 YYYY MM DD Temperature Unit Fahrenheit v Internal Temperature Offset WARNING Intemal temperature is pre calibrated at the factory The offset is necessary when the unit is operating in very low airflow environment where intemal board heating causes intemal temperature to read slightly warmer than the outside air Interface Type Contemporary Save Changes Devices Unique Address Device Type Friendly Name O154EAG6A1300008D climate Demo Weather Goose
85. tion that on some kinds of cabi nets leaving a door open can actually disrupt the proper flow of air across the equipment decreasing the overall cooling efficiency and making your A C units work harder Or worse making your equipment run hot Depending on your server room s location and security requirements you might also place sensors on any doorways allowing access to the room although this option should be considered carefully if personnel fre quently come and go during the day the steady stream of alarm mail will quickly become an irritant However such alarms can be valuable for weekend monitoring if a door sensor goes off on a Sunday when the building is supposedly unoccupied something is wrong Fortunately ITWatchDogs latest line of monitoring equipment lets you choose wheth er to receive such alerts all the time only during business hours or only outside of business hours making situations like this much easier to manage Note that door sensors will take some carpentry skill and various hand tools to install correctly The Well Monitored Server Room Whether you have two server rooms to manage or two hundred having a proper monitoring system in place greatly increases your chances of surviving a climate failure with minimal damage Just don t forget to periodically test your sensors 18 Appendix How Fast Will Server Room Heat Up specific heat temperature C density kg m E 30C
86. to assume this means that the room is 72 F everywhere But of course this simply isn t the case temperatures can vary by 10 degrees or more in a room and variations of 20 F inside server cabinets are common One WeatherGoose user attempted to check the accuracy of his remote temperature sensors by arranging them on an eight foot long workbench located against one end of his server room spaced equally apart across the bench He discovered to his surprise that one end of the work bench was 8 degrees hotter than the other end At first the user suspected faulty sensors but by placing an industrial digital thermometer at each end of the bench the user verified the temperature difference was real To minimize the workbench effect he tie wrapped all six tempera ture sensors together so that they would all be reading temperatures in the same spot on the bench Once tied together all the temperature sensors read within half a degree F of each other Another IT manager who built a 50 x 50 server room large by our standards small by data center standards related her experience 11 We have hot spots in our data center I can show you 10 wall section 15 F higher than the rest of the room I m putting in an additional air conditioning duct to hit that spot she commented These experiences illustrate the importance of monitoring your server room s temperature with several sensors at multiple locations otherwise equ
87. ts are stored in a log file in non volatile memory The user can select certain sensors to be logged or to have all of them logged Log entries are made every 60 seconds The amount of data that can be stored depends on the number of sensors being logged but many configurations have room for 30 days worth or more Once the log memory is full the oldest entries are pushed out to make room for the newest ones so the log always contains the most recent samples The data stays in the log until the user explicitly clears it The user can download the logged data directly from the unit s web page as a Comma Separated Value CSV formatted text file Most popular spreadsheet programs such as Microsoft s Excel or OpenOffice Calc can read CSV files The Goose can draw a graph of the data from selected sensors over a selectable time scale The graph is drawn from the data in the log so data from a given sensor must be being logged in order to be graphed The user can select data from any combination of sensors to be graphed New sensors can be selected and the graph redrawn at any time The graphing 52 function does not affect data in log data from a given sensor stays in the log whether or not it is selected to be graphed The user can set an alarm threshold on any sensor If the reading exceeds the threshold the alarm will be tripped The alarm can cause an email to be sent to any or all of five specified email addresses
88. tures can provide a war is clogged or that the A C has a coolant leak that a filter ITWatchDogs climate monitors log the readings from each tempera ture sensor so long term records can be kept and analyzed They also can display the readings on graphs so developing trends can be spotted ITWatchDogs monitors were originally designed for datacenters and server rooms but our customers have found other uses for them as well Several laboratories have used them to measure and log temperatures in experiments and to warn the researchers if a temperature exceeds some limit Some school lunchrooms uses them to log temperatures in a food storage cooler so the they can prove that the food has always been kept at the proper temperature The climate monitors have a way to set up an escalation procedure one alarm can be set to trip on a given temperature and notify the first line support person second alarm can be set on the same sensor to trip at a higher temperature and then notify a higher level support person s Up to five email addresses and two SNMP manager applications can be notified by a given alarm Multiple alarms can be set on any sensor 87 only limit is that total number of alarms set on all sensors cannot more than 200 Monitoring R H and Dew Point Many of ITWatchDogs climate monitors have internal relative humidity dew point sensors and we also offer an external combo sensor wand which mea
89. ugh a web browser ITWatchDogs standard firmware has a built in web server so no special software is needed on a PC or a Mac or a PDA or cell phone to use any member of the family ITWatchDogs tests new releases of the firmware with Internet Explorer Firefox and other popular web browsers to make sure they display the pages properly Special pages with text only displays are also provided for use with PDAs or cell phones members of the climate monitor family share a common set of web pages The screen shots in this chapter are typical examples of pages from any of them 53 SuperGoose II SuperGoose II v3 4 0 IP Address 2 Local Time Fri 04 Sensors Heo 81 87 F Relative Humidity 40 Dew Point F 55 18 F Light Level 0 Dark 100 Bright Air Flow 20 Still 100 Rushing Sound Level 0 Quiet 99 Loud B 0 0 Vdc 99 5 0 0 Vde 99 5 0 0 Vde 99 5 Vdc RTAFH Temperature Air Flow Humidity A typical example of the initial web page generated by a SuperGoose II displaying a status summary internal sensors and an external sensor 54 The of each page is always same friendly name is assigned to each device by the user and that name is displayed at the top of the page The device s IP address is given as well as the local date and time and the software revision number Friendly Name SuperGoose II v3 3 4 Software Versi
90. y smoke alarms have a third wire that enables one smoke alarm to set off other alarms such as in a hallway or long building ITW uses this extra wire to relay the alarm signal to a WeatherGoose as well The smoke alarm still operates in the normal mode but now an e mail alert can be sent to someone offsite in addition to the smoke alarm s siren Power How to Keep the Juice On The nightmare of power strips stems from the internal circuit breakers in the power strips An electrician explained there are two types of circuit breakers in power strips thermal and magnetic In most installations web or e mail servers are expected to turn on and stay running If the power consumed exceeds the limit of the circuit breaker the entire computer system will be abruptly disabled There is no advance warning for breaker tripping one day all the equipment plugged into the affected power strip goes off The IT manager is left to wonder if the normal operating load current was exceeded or if the circuit breaker has become defective Suppose a power strip is rated at 15 amps If the strip uses a thermal breaker and the total load on the power strip held steady at 16 amps the thermal breaker would eventually trip and turn the entire strip off But if the strip uses a magnetic breaker and a power surge occurred which briefly raised the current above 15 amps the faster acting magnetic circuit breaker would trip even if the normal load of the equipment c
91. ys 0 for dark to 99 for bright light airflow readings of 20 indicates still air while 99 indicates very high airflow a sound level of 0 indicates quiet while 99 indicates loud noise Note that the sound level values are merely an average measurement of the overall sound level in the vicinity of the sensor the WeatherGoose does not record or transmit the actual sounds picked up by the sensor and has no provision to do so The peak average detector circuit used in the Goose s design does not allow the room sounds to be heard or stored remotely in any way External Sensors External sensors allow you to measure conditions at several locations instead of just at the Climate Monitor For instance a temperature sensor could be placed at an air conditioner duct to measure the temperature of the air coming from it Things like a dirty filter or a coolant leak can cause that temperature to increase slowly over time and the graph drawn by a Goose would make such a trend easy to see Multiple temperature sensors located throughout the room can reveal where the hot spots are so more cooling can be directed to those places Using ITWatchDogs external temperature airflow humidity probes to measure the speed of the air entering and leaving a rack can detect when filters are clogged or airways obstructed as well as showing trends in temperature or humidity which could help spot refrigerant loss or a decline in the cooling unit s efficiency
92. ys the current draw and peak current as well as the real power being supplied the power factor and the product of the voltage times the current the apparent power A Remote Display unit which connects to the PowerGoose II by means of a coiled telephone style cord is available as an optional add on This unit adds an LCD status display and an audible alarm horn similar to those built in to the SuperGoose II and RelayGoose II 40 Climate Monitor Comparisons pr Flow External Sensors DigtaPots o 1 16 5 5 4 4 4 Digital Sensors 0 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 0 5 DC Analog 0 o 3 3 3 6 6 3 Features Te fURakMomt y Audible Alarm LCD Display ft CuiputRelgys 110 208 vac Outlets io T available optional Remote Display add on o m m ER o m E J weamercoosen sesso C TL remos neces roen EHE MiniGoose XP II RENE PowerGoose 41 Chapter 5 Sensors 42 ITWatchDogs has a full line of external sensors that can be connected to most of the climate monitors There are two classes of sensors digital and analog The dig

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