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Asentria, formerly Omnitronix

News & Events

Why Remote Monitoring Saves The Day

By Ed Sullivan

The proliferation of remote and unmanned facilities is exposing many enterprises to devastating events. The need is to not only detect a threatening condition, but to also get a precise message to the person who is prepared to do something about it.

On a cold Saturday evening in Midtown Manhattan, the assistant manager of the research facility of a major pharmaceutical house was enjoying her dinner when she received E-mail on her computer that read, “Temp Lab 4 Air Handlr 78 degrees, 1830.” She noted the time and continued with her dinner. But she would also remain watchful for further messages about Lab 4, which was unmanned on weekends and located at least an hour away. If she got a notice that air handler temperature had reached 80 degrees, or that the humidity in the lab had exceeded 30 percent, she would then verify that a service tech had also been notified and gone to the site.

There was no emergency in Lab 4 that weekend. The temperature in the air handler, which exhausted the heat from a bank of PCs and workstations, did not exceed 78 degrees, which is the point for which service action would be called. As it turned out, the fan belt in the air handler was frayed. It was replaced on Monday morning when the staff reported for duty. But if the air handler temperature had reached 80 degrees, that would have been a different story - a threat to some 20 computers and other sensitive research equipment. Under those circumstances, prompt service would have been critical.

Fortunately the lab in question, as well as, other facilities at the pharmaceutical plant, are automatically protected against a wide range of threats. That protection is provided by a system of sensors that will detect intrusion or environmental conditions that could result in system malfunctions, the loss of data, intellectual property and equipment. Moreover, the system is capable of notifying appropriate support staffs, depending on the threat, by pager, Email, wireless or even combinations of those modes. They can also trigger the video- or data-recording of an entire sequence of events.

SAVING COSTS ALL OVER

This kind of system represents a coherent solution to what has become a major issue today: Technological advancements and competitive markets are forcing enterprises to cut spending, while also reducing the risk of equipment failures that could cause business interruptions, data loss, or risk to human safety. Reduced spending often translates to reduced maintenance staff or even unmanned operations.

Addressing all of these challenges can be accomplished through the use of automated communications devices that relay conditions-based messages to the right person at the right time. Such capabilities are becoming critical for a growing number of enterprises today, yet are missing from many current site-monitoring schemes. This may be especially true where new systems must be integrated with legacy ones.

“The need to remotely manage and protect facilities from intrusion and unfavorable conditions is increasing across science and industry,” says Tim Stoner, president of Asentria, a manufacturer of equipment used in remote communications monitoring and notification systems. “And the tolerance for leaving difficult pieces out of that monitoring system is a lot less than it used to be. As enterprises become more automated, networked and remotely managed, they often become more vulnerable to intrusion and environmental threats.”

Stoner believes that corporate managers need to take a careful look at the variety of secondary factors which could cripple operations, possibly resulting in system malfunctions, loss of data or intellectual property, damage to mission critical hardware or even theft of valuable physical assets. Such conditions often include environmental events, fail- ure of air conditioning systems, power outages, and untoward human actions.

At the same time, it is important to notify the right personnel with the appropriate message about the disposition of alarm situations. You shouldn’t call the fire department in to change the fan belt on an air handler. On the other hand, problems at a remote, unmanned power substation may require a message warning not to enter the facility until an emergency team has disabled faulty equipment.

Matanuska’s last-mile telecom equipment huts are subject to severe extremes of cold, making the monitoring of temperature and battery health of particular importance.

SOME ADVANTAGES

What are the economic advantages of automating such alarm and notification systems? “The savings could be enormous,” Stoner says, “it depends on what’s at risk . . . precious intellectual property, customer credit information, or exotic gear, for example. Of course, when human safety is at stake, the advantage goes beyond price.”

To facilitate these condition-based messages, firms such as Asentria market devices can monitor your secondary equipment such as a PBX or batteries, or environmental conditions such as temperature, humidity, or water leaks. Many products can even receive SNMP traps or legacy alarm protocols from other devices and convent them into standard alarm text messages. Pager, E-mail or even voice simulation can then relay these messages over telephone. Depending on programmable parameters, these messages can be sent to one or more people, with various recipients determined by the severity of event conditions.

MAKING PRINCETON’S COMPUTER LAB SMARTER

Like other educational and research centers, Princeton University has a need to protect the intellectual property of the university, students and faculty. This includes securing facilities that house expensive equipment and sensitive data.

“Normally, the support staff members are offsite during nights and weekends,” says Chris Tengi, systems and network administrator at Princeton’s Department of Computer Science. “But we are always concerned about monitoring power supply, humidity, ambient temperature and related equipment that supports our facilities. If we have some sort of mishap that knocks out air conditioning in the middle of the night, we need to know about it. And we are certainly concerned about unauthorized entry or human actions that could compromise our systems.”

The facilities that Tengi supports include the department’s main computer room and labs that house workstations, PCs and other resources for Princeton’s Computer Science students, as well as advanced research projects.

Tengi investigated the SNMP-Link Model SL61 Remote Site Manager by Asentria. With the SL61 you can connect multiple environmental sensors that can monitor temperature, humidity, airflow and water leaks. Those sensors can be deployed at locations hundreds of feet away from the SL61-based unit.

“We used the EventSensors™ to detect high humidity or temperatures that are too high or too low. If this ever occurs, it will generate an E-mail message to our pagers,” Tengi explains. “You can buy and configure these with different combinations of capabilities. So, if I only needed a temperature sensor in one place and I didn’t need to detect contact closure or humidity conditions, I can do just that. Being able to mix or match the sensors is convenient and saves on costs.”

PLUGGING THE HOLES

Telecom operations typically have sophisticated network and systems management software in place to monitor their servers, workstations and routers. Such systems often utilize SNMP as a means of transmitting and receiving network monitoring information, which is great if you run only modern equipment. But what about the other elements that impact the health of a network such as power sources, old PBXs, batteries, legacy telecom boxes that don’t recognize SNMP, or environmental sensors? If you don’t address these elements, you can experience significant downtime along with added costs and customer dissatisfaction.

This was the case at the Matanuska Telephone Association (MTA), a telephone, cellular and Internet Service Provider (ISP) operating near Palmer, Alaska (about 45 miles north of Anchorage). Matanuska network spanned an area of 10,000 square miles. While the backbone and central office were modern, many last-mile telecom huts contained legacy equipment and non-SNMP-enabled batteries that could not be centrally monitored.

How were service issues dealt with? If seven subscribers called with a problem, the company dispatched someone to fix it. “People sometimes had to wait overnight before a bug was resolved,” said Rich Allen, MTA’s traffic administrator.

The company solved much of the problem using a combination of two products: SNMP-Link 81 (SL81) by Asentria and a network monitoring system known as InterMapper by Dartware, LLC, of Hanover, NH.

The software makes a map for the standard network devices and monitors their health. However, in many cases the maps have a multitude of “blind spots” that don’t show up because they are invisible to the system. Blind spots can include: legacy, non-SNMP and non-networked devices; PBX’s or Central Office switches; output relays; and various types of sensors.

Equipment rooms, for example, often contain devices that lack a network interface. Though many of these are quite old, they are often smoothly running and too expensive to replace. Fortunately, tools are available that “speak” to these boxes and bridge the gap with an SNMP network at a fraction of the replacement cost.

Depending on the available infrastructure at the specific telecom hut, alarms and specific messages can travel to the necessary service personnel via Ethernet, phone line, Internet or wireless. Managers receive alarms via pagers, E-mail, or can view alerts on their InterMapper or Asentria software.

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