News

Maintaining a large data center requires constant attention to infrastructure. Among the modernization works performed in our data centers in the first half of this year, one that stands out is the implementation of a new data center monitoring system which, like the previous version of the system, is based on the industry standard SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition).

Currently, with the support of the new system, our DC operators monitor round the clock nearly 90,000 various sensors (ca. 22,000 more than last year), constantly taking care of not only the Atman Data Centers’ infrastructure, but also the customers’ SLA conditions. The number of sensors is continuously increasing due to further expansions of our facilities, and also because we are doing our best to maximize the much higher potential of the new system.

From the operational side, the change of the monitoring system provided us with a guarantee of operational security, i.e. much higher availability of the system due to full redundancy of the production servers which operate in a virtualized environment.  The new system allows us to more automate the process of adding more monitored elements, such as data rooms being put into use.

At the same time, the quality of reporting and visualization of information collected by SCADA has been improved thanks to Dream Report system, which we implemented in parallel with the new monitoring system and integrated with its databases.

The tasks of the data center monitoring system include 24/7 supervision and recording of current measurements of key parameters on three levels:

• Single customer’s server rack – including the temperature of the cooling air, the opening of the rack door, the power consumed by the rack
• Data room – including air humidity, sensors of electric voltage presence, detailed parameters of electric voltage, air conditioning systems, water detectors
• Entire facility – including the study of power system flows, power grid analysis and switching backup power systems, monitoring the operation of UPS systems and power generators, cold storage, fire protection systems and dampers, burglar alarm systems.

The most important purpose of maintaining such an extensive monitoring system is ability to detect threats at an early stage thanks to collecting various data from many production subsystems in one application.  This significantly speeds up the response of services to possible emergency events, thus helping us to ensure security and high availability of services provided in Atman Data Centers.

Additionally, the monitoring system allows users to remotely supervise their devices operating in the data center. In Atman Customer Zone, colocation customers can track selected events in their racks (e.g. rack door opening), monitor environmental conditions (e.g. cooling air temperature) or check current power consumption of the colocated equipment.