Data Center Threats:
Today's common techniques for monitoring the data center environment date from the days of data threat for centralized mainframes, and include such practices as walking around with thermometers and relying on IT personnel to "feel" the environment of the room. But as data centers continue to evolve with distributed processing and server technologies that are driving up power and cooling demands, the environment must be looked at more closely.
Rising power density and dynamic power variations are the two main drivers forcing changes in the monitoring methodology of IT environments. Blade servers have tremendously increased power densities and dramatically changed the power and cooling dynamics of the surrounding environments. Power management technologies have pushed the ability of servers and communication equipment to vary power draw (and therefore heat dissipation) based on computational load. This issue is described in detail in APC White Paper # 43, "Dynamic Power Variations in Data Centers and Network Rooms."
Although it is common to have sophisticated monitoring and alerting capabilities in physical equipment such as the UPS, computer room air conditioner (CRAC), and fire suppression systems, other aspects of the physical environment are often ignored. Monitoring of equipment is not enough the surrounding environment must be viewed holistically and watched proactively for data center threats and intrusions. Such data center threats include excessive server intake temperatures, water leaks, and unauthorized human access to the data center or inappropriate actions by personnel in the data center.
Remote network locations such as branch offices, data rooms, and local point-of-sale locations further highlight the need for automated monitoring, where it is impractical and unreliable to have people physically present to check conditions such as temperature and humidity. With the introduction of unmanned network outposts, IT administrators must have reliable systems in place to know what is going on.
With today's technologies, monitoring systems can be configured to a level of detail that meets the data center's particular environmental and security demands each rack can be considered a mini "data center" with its own requirements, with a monitoring strategy that may include multiple data collection points.
This paper discusses physical data center threats that can be mitigated by distributed monitoring strategies, and offers guidelines and best practices for implementing sensors in the data center. It also discusses the use of data center design tools to simplify the specification and design process of these distributed monitoring systems.
What Are Distributed Physical Data Center Threats?
This paper addresses a subset of threats distributed physical threats that are of particular interest because they require deliberate and expert design to defend against them. To identify that subset, it will be helpful to briefly characterize the range of threats to the data center.
Data center threats can be classified into two broad categories, depending on whether they are in the realm of IT software and networking (digital threats) or in the realm of the data center's physical support infrastructure (physical threats).
Digital Data Center Threats:
Digital threats are such things as hackers, viruses, network bottlenecks, and other accidental or malicious assaults on the security or flow of data. Digital threats have a high profile in the industry and the press, and most data centers have robust and actively maintained systems, such as firewalls and virus checkers, to defend against them. APC White Paper # 101, "Fundamental Principles of Network Security," reviews the basic safeguards against digital threats. Digital threats are not the subject of this paper.
Physical threats
Physical threats to IT equipment include such things as power and cooling problems, human error or malice, fire, leaks, and air quality. Some of these, including threats related to power and some related to cooling and fire are routinely monitored by built-in capabilities of power, cooling, and fire suppression devices. For example, UPS systems monitor power quality, load, and battery health; PDUs monitor circuit loads; cooling units monitor input and output temperatures and filter status; fire suppression systems - the ones that are required by building codes - monitor the presence of smoke or heat. Such monitoring typically follows well understood protocols automated by software systems that aggregate, log, interpret, and display the information.
Data Center Threats monitored in this way, by pre-engineered functionality designed into the equipment, do not require any special user expertise or planning in order to be effectively managed, as long as the monitoring and interpretation systems are well engineered.
