How to Regulate and Monitor a Secure Server Room

How to Regulate and Monitor a Secure Server Room

The security of your server room is crucial in its ability to function properly and keep your business up and running. There’s the technical side of securing your servers, but there’s a physical side to it as well. Here are some of our favorite tips to keep your server room physically safe from intruders, humidity, and heat.

5 Monitoring Tips to Keep Your Server Room Safe & Secure

1. Lock the Server Room

Make sure your server room has solid locks to keep unwanted intruders out. Many server rooms are secured by a key code for further protection. Airtight doors can also help keep humidity levels at bay, while reducing temperature fluctuations.

2. Surveillance Systems are a Must

Surveillance systems for server rooms are two-fold. Cameras and other detection tools can be used to monitor who comes and goes through a server room, as well as what temperatures and humidity levels are at. You can’t be there to watch your server room 24/7, yet, even after-hours, servers and data equipment remains hard at work. Surveillance cameras and systems can be set up to send you alerts and keep you in the loop no matter where you are.

3. Utilize Rack Mount Servers

Rack mount servers offer a compact and secure option as they can be locked into closed racks. These racks can then be bolted to the floor. This makes it virtually impossible for someone to get away with your servers and all the sensitive data they contain.

4. Regulate Temperatures

Monitoring server room temperatures helps ensure temperatures don’t spike above safe levels. An overheated server room is a serious cause for concern. It puts your equipment at risk of overheating, shutting down, or even sparking a fire. All this hardworking equipment generates a lot of heat. Just imagine if you put a bunch of people in a small room and had them run and jump on a constant basis, it wouldn’t take long before the room became incredibly hot, much hotter than the surrounding rooms in the same building.

Monitor temperatures on a consistent basis and have a system in place to alert you to temperature spikes even when no one is at the office. Otherwise, if equipment is forced to run in temperatures that regularly creep over 80 degrees F, there’s heightened risk for equipment failure and other issues.

5. Regulate Humidity Levels

Even if the temperature of your server room is on point, there’s a chance that humidity levels are at unsafe levels. It’s important to monitor humidity levels to prevent too much humidity or moisture from building up in server or data center rooms. After all, humidity has dire consequences on sensitive server equipment. To make matters worse, temperatures generally fluctuate throughout the server room, with some pockets much warmer than others due to the presence of working equipment. As a result, moisture deposits itself in electronic components or connectors and this eventually leads to damages.

You can monitor humidity levels on a regular basis using a variety of measures that’ll send you emails, text messages, and phone call alerts if humidity levels spike.

Why are server rooms so prone to humidity in the first place?

Server room humidity levels are often an issue because server rooms are kept cooler than their surroundings. So, when the door is open to the server room, the surrounding area’s humidity tends to get absorbed into the server room because of its lower temperature—which humidity is drawn to. In some cases, the door doesn’t have to open for this to happen. Say for instance, the door is not airtight and humidity can seep through small gaps. 

Need help maintaining optimal server room temperatures and humidity levels? Contact the pros at Cooling Power for affordable options, including spot coolers for rent.