Humidity Monitoring

Data Center Humidity Monitoring

Data centers often focus on temperature when tracking environmental conditions, but humidity is another critical factor. Data center humidity monitoring helps identify conditions that can lead to condensation, corrosion or electrostatic discharge before they damage servers and other sensitive equipment.

Maintaining appropriate humidity levels helps protect data center equipment, reduce the risk of unplanned downtime and prevent costly repairs. ASHRAE recommends humidity conditions ranging from a 41.9°F dew point to 60% relative humidity (RH), with an allowable RH range of 20% to 80%.

Why Is Data Center Humidity Monitoring Important?

Humidity levels that become too high can cause condensation. Over time, condensation can contribute to corrosion and damage to electronic components. Humidity that is too low, on the other hand, increases the risk of electrostatic discharge that can damage critical components such as:

  • CPUs
  • RAM
  • Hard drives
  • Motherboards

Continuous data center humidity monitoring can alert personnel when conditions move outside established limits, providing time to address the problem before sensitive IT equipment is affected.

data-center-ebook.png

Maintaining Ideal Humidity Levels in Data Centers

Continuous monitoring provides the information needed to maintain appropriate humidity levels throughout a data center. Many external factors can change indoor humidity, especially if you are using an airside economizer system.

Bringing cold air in from the outside to cool your data center can change humidity levels. Depending on conditions, incoming air may require a humidification or dehumidification process to maintain appropriate humidity levels.

How Does a Data Center Humidity Monitoring System Work?

Environmental monitoring systems for server rooms and data centers continuously track humidity and can alert personnel when conditions move outside established limits. The same system can also monitor environmental and equipment conditions such as like temperature, airflow, smoke, power failure, water leaks and intrusion.

Whether you’re at work, home or traveling, you can monitor conditions remotely and receive notifications when problems occur, providing real-time visibility into environmental conditions and equipment status.

Monitor Data Center Humidity Remotely

The Sensaphone IMS system can monitor relative humidity in your server room or data center from 0% to 100% RH. If levels go outside the established range, the system can immediately notify designated personnel.

To protect your data center, humidity sensors can be placed throughout the server room or facility to identify variations in humidity from one location to another. This provides the information needed to identify potentially harmful conditions and respond before they develop into critical equipment problems.

Suggested Products for Data Center Humidity Monitoring

Sensaphone IMS-1000
Sensaphone IMS-4000
Sensaphone IMS Room Humidity Sensor