What is Data Center Monitoring? Exploring Its Role in Security

An organization’s data, applications, and technology resources reside in a data center—an essential component for business operations and continuity. However, with the increasing complexity and volume of data, keeping these resources secure and functioning efficiently becomes a significant challenge.

Without constant monitoring, issues such as hardware failures, power surges, or security breaches can lead to costly downtime and operational disruptions. The solution lies in data center monitoring, which ensures that IT infrastructure remains operational by proactively identifying potential problems.

Manual monitoring of data centers is time-consuming and inefficient. To address this, many companies turn to Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) software, which provides comprehensive tools for performance monitoring, hardware maintenance, and asset management.

With DCIM software, businesses can streamline operations, maximize uptime, and ensure resource availability while monitoring the many variables that influence data center performance.

To learn more about how to optimize your data center operations, continue reading the full article.

Why is data center monitoring important?

Data center monitoring is crucial for ensuring the continuous and efficient operation of critical IT infrastructure. Tracking the performance of servers, storage, and networking equipment helps detect and address potential issues before they cause downtime or data loss. This proactive approach reduces the risk of system failures, optimizes resource utilization, and ensures that the data center operates at peak efficiency.

Additionally, monitoring environmental conditions such as temperature, humidity, and power usage is essential for preventing equipment damage and maintaining a stable operating environment. With real-time alerts and insights, data center monitoring enables IT teams to quickly respond to emergencies, enhance security, and meet compliance requirements. Ultimately, it helps minimize operational costs, increase uptime, and improve the overall reliability of the services provided by the data center.

How does data center monitoring work?

Data center monitoring works by continuously tracking the performance and health of various systems and components within a data center, such as servers, storage devices, networking equipment, and environmental factors like temperature and humidity.

Specialized monitoring software collects real-time data from sensors and devices, allowing operators to detect potential issues like equipment failures, power surges, or environmental fluctuations that could affect the infrastructure. This data is then analyzed to provide actionable insights and generate alerts if performance thresholds are exceeded or anomalies are detected, enabling proactive management.

In addition to monitoring hardware and environmental conditions, data center monitoring also involves tracking the status of virtualized environments, network traffic, and security systems. Advanced monitoring tools use predictive analytics and machine learning to identify patterns and predict potential failures, helping prevent downtime before it occurs.

Data center operators can use dashboards to visualize data, set thresholds for various parameters, and automate responses to certain conditions, ensuring the optimal operation of the entire data center infrastructure.

Data center monitoring vs. data center management

Data center monitoring and data center management share the work of managing an organization’s resources within a data center, but they aren’t the same thing.

Data center monitoring involves tracking a data center's operations, performance, security, and environment using manual and automated monitoring systems. For example, automated systems might monitor the temperature of servers to ensure they don’t overheat, or software may track network traffic to detect unusual activity, alerting IT teams about potential security threats. 

On the other hand, data center management uses data center monitoring to service a data center and ensure it runs optimally. Managing a data center encompasses the physical maintenance and operation of the facilities, such as ensuring proper cooling, power distribution, and hardware maintenance. For instance, data center managers might schedule routine equipment inspections, manage power usage to reduce costs and ensure that backup generators are functioning correctly. 

What do I need to monitor in my data center?

Data center monitoring tracks infrastructure, security, and environmental conditions to guarantee the best performance. By watching over a combination of these elements, IT professionals and data center operators can detect and address issues early. Specific factors to track are discussed here. 

Hardware components and performance

Data centers provide a physical location for storing computing infrastructure, such as servers, storage drives, and network equipment. 

• Servers: When monitoring servers, tracking core processing unit (CPU) utilization, memory usage, and uptime assists data center managers in understanding any potential issues that may hurt operations. Unusual server-related events, like high CPU use or unexplained server reboots, could indicate signs of server failure. With this knowledge, a data center manager can prevent the impacts of server downtime.

• Storage systems and devices: Essential in IT infrastructure and effective operations, storage has no lack of risk, making it a critical component to track. Without storage space, other infrastructure, like network performance and computation speed, could be harmed. Additionally, storage devices like hard disk drives may fail over time. Monitoring storage preserves irreplaceable business data.
• Network equipment: Organizations that monitor data centers should track network performance to understand latency and error rates. Monitoring delays and mistakes helps identify network issues like faulty equipment and configuration problems.

Security metrics

Security monitoring comprises tracking metrics to safeguard sensitive business data and private information. 

• Physical access: Like any other physical facility, data centers are at risk of security breaches. Monitoring physical access controls includes recording entries and exits to the data center and other secure access areas using access logs and surveillance cameras. Access logs are crucial for auditing purposes and detecting unauthorized activities. 

• Incident details: Incident response metrics, like the number of security incidents and the associated response times, help evaluate the organization’s incident response strategies and security. Being mindful of when and how incidents occur allows data and IT professionals to identify specific vulnerabilities that require attention.  

Environmental factors

Monitoring environmental data center conditions prolongs the lifespan of your equipment and maintains healthy operations. 

• Temperature: Servers and networking equipment generate significant heat during operations. Maintaining a reasonable temperature helps keep all equipment in a data center within safe thermal limits to avoid overheating. Unreasonably high temperatures can lead to hardware failures. The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) is a popular energy standard for data centers that offers recommendations for data center temperatures.

• Humidity and water leakage: Like heat, too much moisture from high humidity levels causes corrosion that damages electronics. Sensors monitor relative humidity levels throughout various locations within the data center for a stable environment. Water leak sensors can help detect the presence of moisture beyond high humidity levels that may cause severe damage to servers, networking equipment, or electrical systems. 

• Airflow: Server racks and aisles in a data center demand proper airflow and cooling. By ensuring adequate airflow, data centers enhance cooling performance and extend the lifespan of hardware components. Optimizing the data center layout and server rack placement can equip the space with ideal airflow routes.
• Smoke detection: Managers use smoke monitoring and detection systems to identify potential fire hazards before they cause damage. Spreading smoke detectors throughout a facility, especially near critical infrastructure, allows data center personnel to respond promptly to any threats. 

Specific metrics to monitor in your data center

Organizations monitor different key performance indicators (KPIs) based on their needs, equipment, and data center setup. If you aren’t sure where to begin, Herman Chan, President of Sunbird Software, offers ten metrics for improving health and efficiency:

• Capacity by key data center resource: What can you learn from real-time reporting on space, power, cooling, network connectivity, and other resources? 
• Data center energy cost: What is your energy consumption? 
• Change requests by user, stage, and type: Who requests changes? Who is making them? What progress are they making? 
• Available cabinet and floor space remaining: How many rack units are open and available? 
• Cabinets with free data and power ports: Which cabinets have available data and power port capacity? 
• Peak load per cabinet over the last 30 days: Are any of your cabinets at risk?
• Cabinet power failover redundancy compliance: Are you doing what is necessary to prevent power outages by tracking your cabinet power?
• Power usage effectiveness (PUE): What’s the ratio of the total amount of energy used by a facility to the energy delivered to devices? 
• Percentage of cabinets compliant with ASHRAE standards: What percentage of cabinets meets the criteria? 
• Hot spots occurrence and duration: Should you address any hot spots with cooling mechanisms or new layouts? 

The benefits of data center monitoring

Data center monitoring helps data center managers, IT teams, and leaders oversee their IT infrastructure and physical location. It also benefits the entire organization and its customers.

Improved uptime and reliability

Data center teams use continuous monitoring to proactively identify and resolve potential issues before they escalate into extended downtime or service disruptions. By observing critical metrics across infrastructure health, security posture, and environmental conditions, they ensure improved uptime and system reliability.

Better utilization of existing infrastructure 

 DCIM tools help data center managers uncover underutilized resources and re-allocate them accordingly. Many dashboards provide real-time metrics on CPU, memory, server network traffic, error rates, and response time. This information helps them identify how to readjust their IT workloads for better performance. 

Increased cost savings

Improved uptime increases cost savings. Data center monitoring can stop hardware failures, corrosion, and other damaging threats to equipment that takes a lot of money to replace. Additionally, with effective tracking, organizations can save on cooling costs and wasted energy by watching these metrics and optimizing their data centers. In particular, optimal temperatures, humidity levels, and airflow can prevent energy waste.

Early detection to prevent serious issues

Your organization must monitor its equipment and environment to avoid disasters, such as a fire that destroys half of its equipment or downtime that harms thousands of customers. The only way to reduce the impact of these scenarios is to monitor its data center and respond proactively to any signs of trouble. 

Considerations when choosing a data center monitoring tool

Data center monitoring tools are all different. The best tool for your needs depends on the size and setup of your data center, your organization’s budget, and the type of monitoring features you want. When choosing a tool, consider the following. 

Notifications and alert methods

Remember, data center monitoring is only effective if you can use the information it offers to prevent equipment, security-related, or environmental issues early on. Make sure you understand how the notification and alert system works. Ask potential vendors:

• What notification and alert methods are available? 
• Will I receive alerts via email, SMS, phone calls, or push notifications through a mobile app?
• Which type of notifications work best for my organization? 
• Who needs to receive notifications, and how do they prefer to be alerted?

Reporting and analytics

Different tools offer different reporting options and analytics to let data center managers continuously review information. Determine which type of reports you need to make informed decisions about your resource allocation and operational inefficiencies. 

Visualization options

In addition to detailed reports, some data center monitoring tools offer 3D visualizations of data centers and their equipment. When a potential issue arises, the ability to spot it quickly on a visual map helps data center managers save time. 3D visuals also provide a glance at your resources for better capacity planning when introducing new equipment. 

Here’s an example of a 3D data center view:

Source: ManageEngine OpManager 

Scalability

Before investing in implementing and setting up a data center monitoring program, teams must consider their future growth and scalability needs. Consider your current data centers and whether your organization plans to further invest in them. If expanding monitoring capabilities is a high priority for your business, evaluate the tool’s process for scalability. 

Training requirements

Data center monitoring can benefit many stakeholders, including operators, IT teams, and facilities leads. Organizations must determine who gets access to data center monitoring outputs and how much training they need to effectively work with them. Onboarding and in-depth training may come at an additional cost, so factor training into the budget for smooth integration.

Don't let data center malfunction be your downfall

Data center monitoring ensures an organization’s IT infrastructure functions properly. Operators and IT professionals can proactively identify and prevent issues by tracking the right KPIs and using a data center monitoring tool for a centralized overview. Early detection of potential problems such as overheating, hardware malfunctions, or network congestion can save significant costs in repairs, reduce downtime, and prevent data loss.

Consider standards and best practices when designing your data center. This includes implementing redundancy measures, adopting scalable monitoring solutions, and continuously evaluating the performance of your infrastructure. Regularly reviewing system metrics, maintaining a proactive approach to troubleshooting, and ensuring proper staff training are critical components for a resilient and secure data center. B

Consider standards and best practices when designing your data center.