Ravica's Sensor Controlled Relay – The Rosetta Stone?

A few weeks ago I talked about using the sensor controlled relay to turn on lights once an alarm had been triggered. In this blog I wanted to give another example of how versatile these units can be.

Solutions . . .

A great example is the solution that I found for a local amusement park. One of their outdoor venues was having an issue with their digital photography equipment overheating. It wasn’t economical to add air condition to the unit, so they needed to find a way to turn on multiple overhead fans automatically.

The management of this unit fell under the IT department, and the admin wanted to remotely monitor the data from his office (or any other portable device). The end solution was to monitor multiple environmental variables with the Ravica Sensor Probe and use the Sensor Controlled Relay to switch on the fan when the room temperature rises beyond the threshold level.

Since the sensor control unit has a user friendly web interface and an autosense feature, setting up the Sensor Controlled Relay is easy. The Sensor Controlled Relay can also be controlled via external computers, using the included SNMP command line utilities either interactively or programmatically.

From the unit itself, you can monitor the status of the Sensor Controlled Relay by four LEDs on the board. You can also monitor the unit remotely by using SNMP traps or the web interface, as well as e-mail and SMS alerts.

Implementation . . .

“The Sensor Controlled Relay provides 1 high-power SPDT 5V relay, with the maximum load up to 15A at 220 VAC. It includes Metal Oxide Varistors (MOVs) and Snubber circuits to protect the open contacts of the relays from high voltage spikes or noise transients. It monitors the power and load, and accepts a control signal, which is sent from the SensorProbe.”

We outsourced a local contractor to do the electrical work and the end result was better then we expected. Not only did we eliminate the equipment from overheating, but we are also able to trend the temp of the units over a given amount of time. This gave the admin a better picture of demand and heat generation.

Another thing to remember is the inlaid protection of this sensor. The Sensor Controlled Relay, it has a built in 16Amp circuit breaker and a 15Amp fuse (380 VAC, 125 VDC) giving it double protection for the external devices and possible damages by electrical fault. This assures protection for your sensor and your investment.

Conclusion . . .

As you can see, the Ravica Sensor Controlled Relay has many uses. It’s ability to control an array of analog devices makes it a versatile solution. It’s ability to monitor and protect itself make it a smart investment. That is why I recommend it every chance that I get.

– JimmyD

The not so funny side of Network Management

Something odd happened today.

I was in a planning meeting with my manager and my AT&T Tilt started to vibrate. I find this very annoying. Of all things to happen during this super exciting meeting, this had to take the cake. Yes, I am being sarcastic and a bit over dramatic. The issue is still the same, I hate being annoyed.

The real point to this rant is to point out the subject of the alert. It was a SMS page from my Ravica tempature probe. It had been violated.

This issue raised multiple questions. The first, and most  important, would be how to politely excuse myself from the meeting. In general, this wouldn’t be a hard thing to do, but my manager was excited about the new data room expansion project. By excited, I mean elated, and by elated, I mean that he expected everyone to have the same level of passion or face the most harsh punishment executed on mere mortals.

Knowing that I could lose my admin privileges, I forged on. I told Jon that something is happening in the sever room and had to leave. He said “ok” and went on with his conversation.

Puzzled, I quickly went into the server room and found the issue. Brandon, our new, green intern had placed his super hot cup of coffee next to the temp sensor. He was in the process of cleaning up cables and listening to the Ramones on his headset.

The heat from his coffee cup quickly raised the temp around the sensor.

From this I have learned two things. The first is that you should never leave your interns unattended. They can cause way too much damage. The second is to not locate your temperature sensor where someone can obstruct it in any way.

Now I have to explain this to my boss. Wish me luck.

– JimmyD

Five major data center outages reported last week

The website Data Center Knowledge recently published an alarming report about five major data center outages that occurred in the past week. Here is a brief breakdown from the article.

• “On Monday June 29, Rackspace Hosting (RAX) experienced a power outage at its Dallas data center that left several areas of the facility without power for about 45 minutes, knocking many popular customer web sites offline.
• “Early Thursday Equinix Inc. (EQIX) data centers in Sydney, Australia and Paris each experienced power failures. While the power outages were brief – Equinix said the Sydney event lasted 12 minutes while power was restored in Paris in just one minute – many key customer sites took considerably longer to recover their systems. The Sydney event led to disruptions for VoIP service in parts of Australia, while the Paris outage caused downtime for the popular video site DailyMotion and the French portal for hosting firm ClaraNet.
• “Google App Engine, the company’s cloud computing platform, had lengthy performance problems on Thursday, experiencing high latency and data loss.
• “A fire at Fisher Plaza in Seattle late Thursday night left many of the building’s data centers without power. The fire in an basement-level electrical room triggered sprinklers and caused extensive damage to generators and electrical equipment. The damage left tenants with backup plans offline for hours, and those without backup sites down until temporary generators restored power early Saturday morning. The biggest impact was at payment gateway Authorize.net, which was offline for more than 12 hours, leaving its merchant customers unable to process credit card sales. Other sites experiencing lengthy downtime included AdHost, GeoCaching and Microsoft’s Bing Travel.
• “Early Sunday, July 5, a fire at 151 Front Street, the major carrier hotel in Toronto, knocked out power on several floors of the facility used by Peer 1 networks. Power was restored in about 3 hours, after a damaged UPS unit was bypassed.”

The author, Rich Miller then goes on to point out some tough questions and the lessons learned from these outages.

Although it is surprising that data centers of this size can experience an outage like this, what is even more surprising is that it all happened in a week’s span. I wonder, is the National Security Agency going to look into this?

The equipment used to monitor this size data center is monumental, but even the smallest IT department can obtain economically priced sensor equipment, like the Bitsight8, combined with Intelligent Sensors, like the AC Voltage Detector and the Digital Voltometer.

The future of data center design

I just read that the NSA is going to build a 20 acre data center in Utah. This one million square foot center will allow the NSA to decentralize its efforts and provide better security. Just imagine the amount of power it will take to operate a data center of this size? This Slashdot article points out that one of the biggest reasons why the government is building this compound is due to its power consumption and the current location’s inability to provide  the needed electricity. The government estimates that it will use at least 65 megawatts of power or about the same amount that Salt Lake City consumes.

“The agency got a taste of the potential for trouble January 24, 2000, when an information overload, rather than a power shortage, caused the NSA‘s first-ever network crash, taking the agency 3 1/2 days to resume operations. The new data center in Utah will require at least 65 megawatts of power” – Salt Lake Tribune

Another cool data center design is the one that Google is planning to build. The entire center will be built on a floating barge, and will use the waves of the ocean to help power the facility. It will also use ocean water to cool the equipment.

Last, but not least, is the underground data center in Sweden. This has to be the coolest data center ever! It is located underground, can withstand a hydrogen attack, has a waterfall and a greenhouse. It can generate its own power, and is equipped with triple redundancy Internet backbone access.

I wonder, what type of environmental monitoring sensors do they have? What type of redundancy and fail-safes? Designing a data center like these is a monumental task. I can’t wait to see what the future holds for Data Center Design.

– Jimmy D

Solar power and your network

I just finished an article written by Robin Lloyd,  titled “Solar Power to Rule in 20 years.”  Alternative energy sources have always been my passion, so I read on; maybe it would shed some light on the subject (lol – had to say it). Robin quotes Ray Kurzweil saying, “There is 10,000 times more sunlight than we need to meet 100 percent of our energy needs.” Can you imagine being able to generate all the electricity required to run your server room? Imagine being  the person who brings this technology to your company?

I spent my lunch time researching my proof of concept design. I Googled Solar Panels and found everything from cool DIY YouTube videos to full service companies. Finding a package wouldn’t be that difficult. Monitoring the package and integrating its data into our current network would be a little more involved.

Monitoring the output of a solar panel can be done with the Ravica Power Monitor. The power monitor can read both 120v and 22v. With this monitor you are able to determine up/down state and measure voltage on a constant basis. With this data you can be alerted on the sensor exceeding a pre-defined threshold with  industry leading notification options like: SNMP traps, email, SMS, MMS and the recently released Skype support. You can also use the data to trend the panels output.

I was done, a quick proof of concept that could work. Imagine being able to show your company how much the IT department is saving! It might be a dream now, but someday it will be reality. Bigger ideas have been planned on the back of a cocktail napkin. Mine was in a Google note book, so I am a step a head!

Did you notice that the price of oil is up again?

– Jimmy D