MakingMost

Making the Most of Your Business Continuity/Disaster Prevention Plan

Managers should expect and demand three primary functional components from an IT environmental monitoring solution: Monitoring, Alerting and Automatic Response. Just discovering a threatening condition or problem is not enough; IT managers need to be notified about issues in real-time by any and all methods technology allows, regardless of when or where they may be. Then, if appropriate, automatic responses should shut down servers and important hardware, transfer processing, start or stop applications, and more within seconds. Anything less is an incomplete solution that will later cost you both downtime and money.

There are a number of systems available that interface with the monitoring systems to link the responsible parties to the respective environmental events. Computer protection systems can be easily interfaced to the protected host via Ethernet or RS-232 Serial Interface with SMS Alerts, SMNP Traps or SMS messages via external GSM modem.

Data centers are each unique in their environmental monitoring needs and potential risks. Applying a "one solution fits all" approach obviously is not appropriate. What seems to work best for many managers is an approach of using a combination of different solutions, some larger and some smaller, to meet the current IT monitoring needs that exist within a data center or throughout an organization. As the data center environment and needs change over time, managers have the greatest flexibility to move monitoring hardware and sensors.

The need for IT environmental monitoring is obvious, although the choice of how to implement such a plan is not. A good IT environment monitoring investment should be made by weighing the initial cost against the potential savings or benefits of the solution, for both the short and long term.