Use case
Server room temperature monitoring
Server rooms overheat for boring reasons: an air-conditioning unit trips overnight, a door is propped open, a new rack goes in without anyone checking the cooling. The servers keep running until they do not.
Put a sensor in the room, send its readings to NoDisrupt, and the same incident process that handles a website outage handles the room getting hot, with the servers, network and UPS on the same screen.
Works on the Free plan. No card to start.
Start freeHow it works
- Step 1
Place the sensor at the inlet
Measure the air going into the front of the racks, not the room's ceiling or the hot aisle. That is the number equipment ratings and guidelines refer to.
- Step 2
Send readings to an asset monitor
Post temperature_c and humidity_pct once a minute from the sensor or from a small gateway.
- Step 3
Alert in two stages
A warning when the inlet passes 27 C, and a phone call to whoever is on the escalation policy if it passes 32 C or keeps climbing.
- Step 4
Watch the equipment too
Add ping and port checks for switches and the UPS, and the agent on Linux hosts, so you can see whether heat is already causing failures.
curl -fsS -X POST "https://api.production.nodisrupt.com/monitor/<id>/feed" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $FEED_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"metrics": {"temperature_c": 23.4, "humidity_pct": 41}}'Suggested limits
| Watch | Metric or check | Example alert |
|---|---|---|
| Inlet temperature | temperature_c | Warn above 27 C, page above 32 C |
| Inlet too cold | temperature_c | Below 15 C: cooling stuck on |
| Humidity | humidity_pct | Above 60% or below 20% |
| Sensor offline | no data received | No reading for 5 minutes |
| Network gear | ping / port monitor | Switch or UPS management port unreachable |
- NoDisrupt does not supply the sensor. Any sensor that can post over HTTPS, directly or through a gateway, works.
- It alerts people; it does not switch cooling on or shut servers down for you.
- Readings arrive over HTTPS only. SNMP polling of environmental monitors is not supported.
Common questions
What temperature should a server room be?
ASHRAE's recommended range for air entering IT equipment is 18 to 27 C (64 to 81 F). Most rooms run at the cooler end; alerting at 27 C means you hear about it while there is still headroom.
What humidity should a server room have?
Roughly 40 to 60% relative humidity is the common target. Very dry air raises the risk of static discharge, and very humid air risks condensation on cold surfaces.
Where should the temperature sensor go?
At the front of the rack, at mid height, where cool air is drawn in. A sensor near the ceiling or behind the rack reads the exhaust and will alarm constantly.
Can it phone someone at 3am?
Yes. Escalation policies can call a phone number, and move to the next person if the first does not acknowledge. SMS and calls use the credits included with paid plans.
What happens if the sensor itself stops working?
The monitor alerts. An asset monitor has a window in which it expects data, and silence past that window raises an incident, so a flat battery, a dropped wifi connection or a power cut is reported the same way a bad reading is.