Data Center Sensors and Cameras

Data Center Sensors and Cameras

We recently completed the installation of a full suite of Meraki sensors and video surveillance of a medium sized data center. The data center has a single chilled water cooling system.

 

They had been using an old Sensaphone monitoring system to monitor the temperature and water leaks. The system was very unreliable and cumbersome to use.

 

We installed an MT10 sensor to monitor the temperature and humidity, an MT12 to monitor water leaks from the chilled water system and an MT20 to monitor the single door access into the data center.

 

We set alerts for both high and low temperatures and humidity levels, water leaks and if the door to the data center was left open for more than a few minutes. We originally installed the water leak sensor so that it was in contact with the concrete floor. Even though the floor was dry, the drain for the condensate from the cooling system was about 8 inches away from the sensor. Their must have been enough moisture in the floor that it was intermittently tripping the sensor. We raised the sensor just a fraction of an inch off the floor and the false alarms stopped. The sensor must be very sensitive to detect moisture on what looks like a dry floor.

 

We installed two MV32 360 degree cameras to monitor the open areas of the data center and installed an MV12W camera to monitor an area behind the main network equipment racks, which is where the chilled water system is installed. We used the telescoping pendant mounts for the two MV32 cameras and the wall mount for the MV12W. The cameras serve as the BLE gateway for the sensors. Each sensor was able to connect to all three cameras from anywhere in the room. 

 

We connected the MT10 and MT12 sensors to the optional AC power supplies and also installed the batteries in all of the sensors, just to insure complete up time.

 

The customer went from having no visibility into the data center to being able to see everything in it, as well as remotely view the temperature and humidity, track the number of times the data center was accessed and know who it was and be alerted if there are any water leaks or cooling system failures.

 

MV32 #1MV32 #1MV32 #2MV32 #2MV12WMV12WMT20 Door SensorMT20 Door SensorMT10 Temperature and Humidity SensorMT10 Temperature and Humidity SensorMT12 Water Leak Detection SensorMT12 Water Leak Detection Sensor

Comments
JeffNeumann
New here

Nice install Jeff!  I can't wait to see some of those sensors in our data center!

AjitKumar
Head in the Cloud

Awesome Job mate.

Many Thanks for sharing the Project Details.

 

Regards

Ajit

AutomationDude
Building a reputation

Awesome project Jeff. Appreciate you going into so much detail, I didn't realize how much precision these data centers work with

KonJain
Meraki Employee

Awesome set up @jbright!

 

Quick note on the MT12 water leak detection. As per our setup guide, the tip of the water leak cable is not water sensitive. Water needs to come in contact with the coiled cable to detect it. I do note that you've had some issues with it being very sensitive. I'd recommend contacting our Support Team to troubleshoot it.

jbright
A model citizen

Thanks for the information @KonJain, we will work with the customer to lower the cable down to the floor.

 

joshtegart
Here to help

Nice, clean install!

van604
Getting noticed

pretty nice setup