Guild Companies

It's 2 a.m. and there's water on your data center floor. The temperature in rack 13 just went up another three degrees, endangering your brand-new xSeries blades. Somebody forgot to close (and lock) the door to your RAID 5 array, located in rack two. The UPS just stopped working. Do you have a way to identify such problems, unless a staff person happens to report it? You probably don't, but Network-LINK just started shipping a product that will identify such events.

Network-LINK is a Salt Lake City startup that has introduced a new networking device that goes by the same name. Network-LINK, the device, enables administrators to monitor a range of physical conditions in a data center--including temperature, relative humidity, the presence of water on the floor, whether a door is open or closed, and the on/off status of other devices. It also sends notification by pager, e-mail, or telephone whenever the device detects conditions that exceed the preset limits.

When one of Network-LINK's environmental sensors detects an adverse condition, it sends a message, over an IP network, that is formatted with the Simple Network Management Protocol. Because SNMP is supported by practically all major vendors of systems management software, Network-LINK is able to directly communicate with the systems management software packages. After Network-LINK has been configured to work with a company's systems management software, administrators receive Network-LINK warning messages via whatever communication channels have been set up with the systems management software. Additionally, these same utilities handle the prioritization and escalation of the message alerts originating from Network-LINK.

Any of the popular systems management applications on the market that support SNMP-- such as Help/Systems' Robot/CONSOLE and Robot/TRAPPER, IBM Tivoli's NetView, Hewlett-Packard's OpenView, or Computer Associates' UniCenter--will work with Network-LINK, said Allan Jones, who started Network-LINK in February.

Network-LINK has a special affinity for Help/Systems software and has been touting the benefits of monitoring data center conditions from AS/400 and iSeries systems, which is the primary platform that Help/Systems' software helps users to manage and operate. Jones said the Help/Systems development team in Minnetonka, Minnesota, has incorporated the particular SNMP format that Network-LINK uses, which gives Help/Systems software the capability to draw more usable information out of Network-LINK's SNMP traps than a generic setup would. Hewlett-Packard's OpenView has a similar capability.

This increased level of support available with systems management software from Help/Systems and Hewlett-Packard is due to the particular management information base, or MIB, that Network-LINK uses. Jones said that by supporting the Network-LINK MIB, Help/Systems and Hewlett-Packard are immediately able to tell exactly which sensor reported the environment aberration. With other systems management products, such as those available for free off the Internet, users would have to consult a cross-reference index to be able to tell exactly which sensor gave the alarm and what it meant.

In addition to detecting disasters, such as a broken water pipe that has flooded the data center, Jones said that Network-LINK can help to prevent certain types of disasters. For example, when computer components start to fail, they often start to generate more heat. The Network-LINK device can detect temperatures with an accuracy of about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit. By placing a Network-LINK temperature sensor inside a rack of servers and monitoring its heat, Jones says, administrators can get an early warning of when the components in that rack are starting to break down, and possibly do some preventive maintenance to prevent a wider, unplanned, outage.

The Network-LINK continuously monitors up to 12 environmental channels, each with either a temperature or a humidity sensor at the end. Alternatively, the user has the option of attaching up to eight contact closures, which are used to detect whether or not a door is closed or whether there is water on the floor, to each temperature or humidity sensor. Additionally, each Network-LINK has two RS-232 serial ports, for connecting to legacy devices such as routers or UPS systems, giving the Network-LINK user the capability to remotely detect the state of those devices. All sensors connect to the core Network-LINK device in daisy-chain fashion using standard RJ-11 cabling, except for the serial devices, which use standard serial cables. The Network-LINK device can be mounted in a standard computer rack.

When users buy the basic Network-LINK package for $2,995 (list price is $3,495), they get the Network-LINK unit, one temperature sensor, one water sensor, two door sensors, 12 feet of RJ-11 cabling, two 10-foot serial cables, a 10BaseT Ethernet card, a 33.6 KPBS modem, rack mount hardware, and 110V power supply. The device communicates with other software using the Ethernet card; the modem is for remote configuration and troubleshooting, and allows Network-LINK technical support personnel to quickly find and fix problems remotely. Additional temperature sensors cost $195, while a sensor that reads both temperature and humidity costs $285. Additional water sensors cost $16, while door contacts can be had for $6. For more information, visit Network-LINK's Web site, at www.network-link.com .

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