It is funny how many times I have recently visited larger data centers considering 'Green IT' or other Efficiency initiatives and find high priority funded projects for wireless temperature sensors. True wireless environment technology is some of the coolest 'tangible' stuff I have seen in a long time. It is a high-tech version of the kind of technologies that we all grew up with, things we all just inherently 'get'. Temperature and Humidity Sensors. What could be simplier?
Here it is in 2010, and is important to realize that finally there are a number of great choices for wireless sensor solutions out there either using Active RFID or 802.15.4 (zigbee) technologies. A customer today really can deploy a fairly granular 'mesh' of sensors in data centers and related facilities areas without much difficulty. The sensors are simple, small, have long battery lives (> 3 years each) and low-cost. All of the solutions have easy to install packaging with double-sided tape or velcro. How easy is that?
Well, I would argue that the REAL VALUE for wireless temperature and humidity environmental sensors are NOT the sensors themselves, nor the data derived from each individual sensor but the aggregation of all of the data from all of the devices, rolled together with the metric data from the co-located IT gear and the facilities deployed HVAC gear, all normalized and easily accessible using ordinary tools. EXCEL anyone? (Or for the web-bies in the crowd, "Xcelsius Anyone?"). Imagine being able to plot the PUE of your data center as a function of outside temperature, or the total power consumption as a function of actual CPU processing (IT load). Remember, sensors can be found everywhere in your data center as discrete wired and wireless boxes, as well as embedded in every IT device purchased in the past 3 years, such as your servers, routers, firewalls and storage directors as well as in every PDU or iPDU (power strip). Sensors are everywhere just waiting to be queried for their metrics!
Customers should think BIGGER. Push the envelope and think PAST the wireless sensors (which ARE very cool), think PAST the pretty pictures that any one of the wireless vendors can draw, and focus on how to transform ALL of the data that you can get your hands on into actionable, cost saving information that can be directly applied in the BIGGER picture of running the IT structure at the lowest cost possible, supporting SLAs, etc.
