Computer server room monitoring

I am looking for a way to monitor the environment of a computer server room. The C-bus products appear to be a good way to do this especially in a room that has a considerable amount of structured cabling that can be used for the interconnects.

Computer server monitoring tools use the tcp/ip protocol SNMP for monitoring events. Is it possible to make C-bus talk SNMP?

Thanks
Iain

 

I dont believe that you are on the right track here - especially if it is the only c-bus device you have (wold have to be a general input)

I have seen something on e-bay that is rack mounted and monitors exactly what you are after. It is a SNMP device as well. I dont know what they were called or who made them, I found them in a search on rackmount (or similar)

I think you can find something specifically made for the job.

Mick

 

APC have this gear. if you have an APC ups you can just get a little card for it.

or stand alone unit

http://www.apc.com/resource/include/techspec_index.cfm?base_sku=AP9340


or ones with cameras that take picture of people who open racks !!

Charles

 

You also might want to consider doing it through an alarm panel. We have done this for a number of clients that want stand alone monitoring (ie non computer based). The main advantage here is that there is no need for a computer to be running in the room for you to be notified of environmental statuses. You need to consider what you are trying to achieve and how far you want to take it.

We normally wire up a couple of heat sensors and two smoke detectors, one in the room and one just outside and have the alarm panel either base monitored or send sms messages upon alarm.

Similarly the SNMP module Charles talks about will meet your needs. We recently put one in for a client and work as indicated.

Regards
Arthur

 

Thanks for the information. I think I need to explain in a bit more detail.

The normal basic environmental conditions are monitored via a SNMP link to the building management system (BMS) which works very well. The outstanding systems to monitor are intruder, fire detection and PDU. I think that it should be possible to monitor intruder and fire detection in a number of ways which leaves the problem of how to monitor the PDU?s. ie. MCB fault tripping

My current thinking was within each PDU to connect every MCB to a fault indicating switch

http://www.schneider.com.au/Product...ection_Isolation/C60_C120 DPN Auxiliaries.pdf

The fault indicating switch would give me the indication of a "fault trip" and I was hoping that I could use the C-Bus components to "see" that trip and flag it as a SNMP message on the computer network. I think the C-Bus Ethernet Network Interface would connect me to the network which just leaves a software component that talks SNMP.

All help on this problem gratefully received

Thanks
Iain

 

The question is why though? There are much better ways of doing it without wanting or needing to use C-bus. There are off the shelf, and not to mention standalone products that doesn't require a C-bus device and a PC running C-gate or like and don't need any special software to translate a C-bus event to an SNMP trap. Where I work we use a Liebert Sitenet Intergrators to turn alarm indications (in out case from door and lock sensors) into SNMP traps seamlessly. I think you are trying to come up with a solution using a product that isn't designed for what you require and any method you come up with I would say would cause a future maintenance liability.