Server Temperature Monitor?

[Kimball Larsen]

On Feb 2, 2009, at 9:07 PM, Dave Smith wrote:

> Kimball Larsen wrote:
>> Possibly not - but if the temp ever gets to 150 in the first place,  
>> the new A/C unit I installed is no longer working properly, and  
>> I'll be alerted to the fact I gotta get some cold air in that  
>> server room asap.
>>
>> That's the only reason I needed this. :)
>
> I am working on a project at work that does exactly this.  
> Unfortunately, it's not exactly available to the public. :) We allow  
> users to customize alarms and thresholds and can take preventative  
> action like shutting down equipment that is over-heating or alerting  
> the staff in an operations center. We've actually built quite a  
> framework of it, all using Qt with a pretty nifty ORM backed by  
> MySQL on Fedora 10, but I digress.
>
> We manage multi-rack systems of hundreds of pieces of equipment  
> (including servers and signal processing gear). In our case, we  
> usually use a separate box for monitoring temperature as they are  
> more reliable and don't fail if a server fails (like from  
> overheating!). If you're interested, I can give you more info, but  
> the boxes we use tend to make their temperature data available via  
> HTTP or SNMP, both of which are readily fetchable with command line  
> scripts.
>
> Separate temperature boxes are also nice because they usually have  
> probes that you can place where you want them, like right near the A/ 
> C unit so you can tell quickly if it has failed and fix the problem  
> before it damages your gear. They are pretty cheap too. I can't  
> imagine operating any kind of data center, small or large, without  
> one.
>
> --Dave

I would agree - but I'm not really running a datacenter.  I've got a  
single rack.  In said rack I've got a single 1U server.  Below that on  
a shelf I've got a single tower form factor computer acting as a  
fileserver.  Next to that I've got a UPS.  Above the 1U mounted server  
I've got a monitor, mouse, keyboard, and kvm.

I just needed a very cheap and dirty way to know if the temp spiked on  
the server.

If, however, I ever add much hardware into this room, you can betcher  
behind I'll be looking for stand-alone devices to monitor temp/ 
humidity, etc.

Thanks!

-- Kimball