Today’s data centers are evolving quickly in order to keep up with the demands of cloud computing, web-based applications, high-availability services and the rest of today’s computing needs. Many businesses choose to host their servers or at least part of their network infrastructure in offsite locations–often in different regions of the country or world.
This makes monitoring the data center environment a more difficult challenge than it may have been in the past. In addition to monitoring environmental factors such as temperature, power requirements and fire and water suppression, the modern data center needs to be monitored for physical (and human) threats as well–threats such as lax security and weak procedures.
There are ways to automatically monitor many equipment-related factors, such as the air conditioning unit, a server’s ambient temperature, UPS loads and the status of fire suppression equipment. These factors are typically straightforward to monitor from a remote location without much effort after their initial implementation. There is also a need to physically walk the environment and examine other factors, like the ability of the data center to prevent unauthorized access, potential structural issues such as water leaks and whether or not data center employees are following appropriate processes and procedures.
Add on top of this the need to monitor other remote locations like retail locations and branch offices, and the task of managing, maintaining and monitoring your network environment has just gotten a bit more daunting. If you and your IT team do not have a plan for managing your company’s data centers, now is a good time to start developing one. In our next post, we will address how to more effectively monitor and address these issues in your company’s network environment.
Minneapolis-based OAC Technology has been helping small- to medium-sized businesses plan and administer their IT environments for 10 years. We can help your technology meet your business needs while maximizing your IT dollars at the same time. Contact us today for a free consultation.
