Any enterprise not monitoring its facilities for environmental conditions might as well stick its head in the sand. Potential financial disaster related to heat or other environmental factors crippling a server, cooling system, or other component is real and constant. Fortunately, AVTECH makes averting such disasters easy and affordable via its all-encompassing Room Alert 32W hardware and Device ManageR software monitoring solution.
Combined, the products provide an advanced, real-time environmental monitoring platform for just pennies per day. In fact, offering a high-end hardware and software platform from one vendor at a low price is what sets AVTECH apart, says Michael Sigourney, AVTECH senior product specialist. AVTECH extends this value via its MSUS (Maintenance Support & Update Service) program. Free the first year and pennies a day thereafter via annual extension, MSUS includes unlimited technical support, firmware and software updates, and 100% guaranteed replacement of any monitoring hardware that should fail. "In the IT world, this is unique and the definition of a manufacturer standing behind its product," Sigourney says.
The Heat Is On A reliable, real-time monitoring solution is a must today or else risks user access to mission-critical data and applications to damage a business’ bottom line. Compounding these risks are unexpected weather conditions that can impact equipment, including abnormally high global temperatures already experienced this year. "If you talk to any vendor in this niche, they’re going to tell you the No. 1 thing you want to monitor is temperature," Sigourney says.
Here, Room Alert 32W supports realtime monitoring indoors and outdoors for temperature but also humidity, heat index, power, room entry and more for up to 100 sensors, including 60 via wireless from 250+ feet away. After an Ethernet plug-and-play setup, Room Alert 32W provides network-wide monitoring via built-in Web server or any SNMP application. Support for email, email-to-SMS, SNMP, Web page, and other advanced alerting is provided, as is real-time sensor status, data logging, and graphing.
Beyond connecting the widest base of sensor types at some of the industry’s lowest sensor prices, Sigourney says, Room Alert 32W’s PoE support and built-in UPS provide the best reliability, all starting at $995, "less than half of our closest competitor." The Room Alert line also includes 4E, 11E, and 24E models bundling different sensor amounts. "One of the reasons AVTECH has been successful is that we have a line of products ranging from a $225 solution that monitors temperature only up to the Room Alert 32W and a variety of things in between," Sigourney says.
The Monitoring Manager Another distinguishing feature of AVTECH’s monitoring hardware is each unit includes Device ManageR free. Compared to competitors’ firmware solutions, Sigourney says, Device ManageR is a complete solution packing such abilities as automatic sensor discovery and monitoring any network-installed or Internet-accessible Axis Web camera.
Running as a Windows service, Device ManageR enables IT to automatically respond to alert conditions from anywhere IT can also shut down or reboot servers; run commands or scripts; perform advanced alerting, logging, graphing, and reporting; dial-out via voice modems and GSM; configure sensor thresholds; and configure alerts to unlimited contacts. The latest 5.0 version adds a dashboard interface that supports creating widgets, including favorites, graphed sensor data, most frequent alerts, and summary totals. Users can also create individual interfaces to highlight what’s most important to them. "It’s the end of everyone sharing the same basic interface, and the dawn of the individual interface in environment monitoring," Sigourney says.
Elsewhere, Room Alert 32W and Device ManageR assist in maximizing uptime and curbing expenses by collecting, logging, and graphing data that managers can use to improve thermal management, power consumption, airflow, and other conditions. "In the end, IT staff and corporate managers obtain a greater peace of mind and an enhanced ability to remain operational. With the increasing reliance on IT infrastructure in almost every business, this is a daily challenge," Sigourney says.
Taking Responsibility Although AVTECH includes Device ManageR free, users can use a chosen SNMP monitoring application instead. These "generic" applications, however, lack a custom interface for working with a hardware monitor or sensor’s special features, Sigourney says. Further, such actions as extracting a log file mixed with numerous other data types can require special permissions or cleaning before it’s provided, he says.
Eventually, Sigourney says, SNMP users tend to give up analyzing data for environmental purposes and rely on the product only to respond to alerts, something that lowers the product’s long-term value by not creating greater efficiencies. Another issue with using hardware and software from separate vendors is the vendors tend to point to one another when problems occur, Sigourney says. Conversely, Sigourney says, AVTECH takes full responsibility for both hardware and software customer issues. "Room Alert and Device ManageR were designed from the very beginning to work together and draw out the full benefits of environment monitoring," he says.
Further, AVTECH’s approach also enables adding more monitors in the future and instantly consolidating the monitoring, alerting, and other features through Device ManageR. "It’s just like LEGOs," Sigourney says. "You add new building blocks as your needs change and develop over time and eventually create the custom solution that works for your facility. This avoids over spending and allows companies to budget a rollout over time."
Contact:
(888) 220-6700 / Sales@AVTECH.com
www.AVTECH.com |
888.220.6700
Sales@AVTECH.com
AVTECH Software, Inc.