Just like my 1974 SAE 2200 solid-state power amp, the AVTECH Room Alert 11E is a quintessential workhorse: solid, ugly, and endowed with very little beyond the basics. In this case, that means three digital sensors on the front panel for temperature and humidity monitoring and eight channels on the rear for receiving input from dry-contact switches (sensors that are either open or closed), which can detect power fluctuations, floods, smoke, sounds, motion, airflow, room entry, and other conditions.
But there's an advantage to it's being merely a box that sends e-mail alerts, shows sensor status via a Web page, and triggers SNMP alerts when sensors trip: It's an open platform. The device can monitor anything as long as the condition can be indicated by a circuit being either open or closed. Suppose you want to know whether the cat needs food. Design a switch that opens when a spring-loaded dish rises above a certain point, connect your contraption to the Room Alert 11E, and when your lovable furball eats enough to raise the dish to the trigger point, you'll get an e-mail.
Of course, most buyers of the unit are more likely to be concerned with the security and integrity of their businesses. Not to worry: The integrated Web server in the Room Alert 11E can also e-mail you about even more important concerns, such as events affecting the environment and physical security of the server rooms and wiring closets that are often the most critical part of a small business's infrastructure. Unfortunately, the device doesn't support SMTP authentication; so with e-mail servers, such as ours, that refuse nonauthenticated sessions, the device will fail to issue e-mail alerts. To get around the problem, you'd have to either set up a separate SMTP server to process alerts or open your corporate e-mail to exploits.
I tested the monitor with extra-cost sensors that detect power levels, room entry, airflow, flooding, and smoke (as well as with the included temperature and humidity sensors). All were supplied by the company. I also used a third-party motion sensor to check that the monitor is actually an open platform (it is). Configuring the devices and setting up the monitor to work with them was relatively easy, and the system worked well. The Room Alert 11E is a dumb box, so it doesn't know what constitutes an alert condition unless you tell it whether the sensor is normally open or closed. For example, water contacting the flood sensor causes its normally open switch to close, completing a circuit, but the normally closed door-strike device breaks a circuit when the door opens. The monitor needs to be given this information.
I found two significant, although easily fixed, problems. No safety mechanism prevents the power connector from accidental disconnection, and critical information, such as the name of the unit and its MAC address, comes on a sticker that had already fallen off the unit by the time I unboxed it. A little shipping tape fixed both situations.
The included PageR Enterprise software (for Windows NT, 2000, XP, and 2003), with any SNMP management console such as Tivoli or the OpenView, unlocks the real value of the Room Alert 11E. PageR Enterprise itself almost deserves a separate review, because it's so powerful. The software can monitor an unlimited number of devices and send alerts to a distribution list via mobile phone, pager, PDA, e-mail, IM, and pop-ups broadcast over a network. You can have PageR notify individuals, groups, or hierarchies and set blackout times when alerts won't be issued. You could, for example, set the system to notify the maintenance department when then temperature in the wiring closet reaches 80 degrees, alert the LAN administrator when it reaches 85, and contact the VP of Engineering when it reaches 90 degrees. You could also set it to let everyone know when the condition has been resolved. If you track many closets or server rooms, then running PageR Enterprise or other SNMP management software for advanced alerting capabilities makes sense and gives you one place where you can check the status of all your wiring equipment. But that may be a little bit of overkill for small businesses that don't need the flexibility of an open environmental-monitoring solution.
The Room Alert 11E is a cost-effective solution well suited to monitoring the all-important wiring closets and server rooms. With pricing this aggressive, businesses could save a lot of money over the APC NetBotz 420 if they need to monitor a number of closets. But with the flexibility comes installation and maintenance complexity: Not every small business needs the former, and many won't be able to handle the latter. Those businesses should check out the APC NetBotz 420, if they can afford its considerably higher price tag. |
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AVTECH Software, Inc.