Monitoring & Alarm Management

Monitoring for both Facilities & IT devices and sending alerts when threshold levels are breached

The early days of DCIM Software was essentially Data Center Monitoring. Today, Data Center Monitoring and Data Center Alarm Management are table stakes. This is not surprising since maintaining 99% + uptime is a critical mandate in data center infrastructure management.

While DCIM 4.0 encompasses much more, Data Center Monitoring & Alarm Management remains DCIM’s raison d’etre. No wonder Data Centers today invest a lot more in Data Center Monitoring Devices like iPDUs, Smart Power Cables, Energy Meters, temperature/humidity sensors, gas sensors and more.
Data Center Monitoring

GFS Crane DCIM connects with all Data Center Monitoring Devices, Facility Devices like HVAC and UPS, IT Devices like Servers and Network routers, and 3rd party systems like Building Management System & ITSM. Monitoring of key parameters of all these at pre-determined intervals and sending alerts when threshold levels are core features of GFS Crane DCIM Data Center Monitoring.

• Building Management Systems via BACNet/IP with a user-friendly BACnet Cockpit
• UPS systems via SNMP or Modbus/TCP
• Power utility meters (integration with multi-vendor Energy meters via SNMP or Modbus/TCP)
• Back-up generators via Modbus/TCP
• Fuel tanks through flow sensors
• Chiller plants & PAC units (Modbus/TCP or SNMP)
• Rack Power & temperature (through Packet Power Smart Power cables and Environment Monitoring Units/temperature probes)
• Rack iPDU up to socket level to provide individual power monitoring for devices
• Server CPU and memory utilization via SNMP
• Smoke detection & fire prevention systems
• Access control & surveillance cameras (through SNMP or vendor-provided SDK)
• Dry Contacts (NO/NC)

Data Center Alarm Management

The objective of Data Center monitoring is to detect anomalies and threshold breaches. An integral feature, GFS Crane DCIM Alarm Management provides the following:

• Defining device-wise and parameter-wise min & max limits, including multiple thresholds with multi-color alarm codes
• Specifying destination of alert delivery: email, SMS, native app of mobile device, Ticketing System
• Defining Escalation matrix of critical alerts
• Analysis of alerts: resolution time, root cause analysis

Alerts would be sent if a device has become unreachable or a parameter is not getting monitored.

Data Center Monitoring & Alarm Management help to reduce risks of a data center failure.

Beyond Monitoring, GFS Crane DCIM can also be set-up for control functions of specific devices. More details in “Control Functions” section.

Besides email or SMS alerts, monitoring yields user-defined periodic reports and trend graphs

Rack Report

Socket level power: Click shows which device is in that U-space

Device Report and trend graph

Alarm Report