An environmental control and monitoring system is critical to any data center management. Amid the demands for immediate response and trends of unmanned data centers, this system captures environmental data in the data center with PCs and sensors saving them in databases and taking actions against individual abnormality alarms. It delivers monitoring data and error messages to the monitoring computer through WAN/LAN for remote control and to management or maintenance personnel via SMS, voice or email.

System customization and monitoring program coding are available on request.

The RDU data center environment monitoring system by Emerson combines servers and management software along with varieties of external sensors to enable data center administrators to ensure the reliability and safety of the center by constantly monitoring every environmental factor including the temperature, humidity, power consumption, leaks or fires.

In terms of data center management, its environmental monitoring is as equally important to maintaining normal operations of the servers, network and storage equipment contained in it. Temperature and humidity are both critical to the operations of IT equipment which, in turn, means stricter control of the computer room environment.

The Rack Data Unit (RDU) by Emerson is a system which enables administrators to control the environmental status within the data center both remotely and online. It contains basic environmental detection and control devices for temperature, humidity, leaks or fires, to name a few.

The RDU may be integrated with data center security devices, e.g. magnetic access detector (to detect open and close status of room or cabinet doors) and IR sensors, to maintain access safety. It may be combined with smart meters to measure and log data center power efficiency. Users may set up an alarm trigger to send warning messages to given personnel once the temperature within the data center or a cabinet tops 35 degrees Celsius, for example.

The RDU system enables data center administrators to remotely control computer room environment status online and logs its changes for later tracking and trend analysis.

At the core of the system is an application server RDU-A which can be contained in a normal cabinet for sensor information and status collection and detection. It features 14 connections and 1 USB port to connect to scores of sensors and web cams.

You can add one expansion card in the RDU-A which provides 4 RS-45 ports for the connection of extra 4 sensors. This means that it can connect up to 14 sensing devices. More devices can be connected with the external sensor expansion module from Emerson. This enables one RDU-A application server to connect to at most 16 IT equipment, 1 webcam and up to 28 environmental sensing devices.

With the RDU system, you may individually view the status of environmental monitoring, UPS and webcams. Click on the environmental detection item and status displays of every temperature, humidity, leak and smoke detector being installed.

The Emerson RDU system features two mechanisms for an administrators’ fast identification on the source of alarms. One is the alarm and warning device which can be connected to sensors at different locations within the data center. For example, you may connect one alarm device to multiple cabinets to sound the alarm with beeps or red light indicators triggered by the sensor devices. This enables the administrators to quickly identify the cause of the alarms.