I got ahold of a pretty interesting white paper from IT Watch Dogs this morning. This white paper discusses the needs for climate and power monitoring on the part of your data center. I can't speak to the quality of IT Watch Dogs' products which the white paper is trying to sell, having never used them.

But, I can say that the first chapter of the paper discusses some much needed components often missing from data center design.

- Do you know at what temperature your servers will start experiencing strange operations? (~95-90 degrees, ambient temperature).
- Do you know at what temperature your servers will experience temperature-related failure? (~105 degrees, ambient temperature)
- Do you know how much hotter the inside of a rack-mounted server can be related to the ambient temperature? (as much as 20 degrees more!)

Take a look at the white paper if any of these questions interest you: http://www.itwatchdogs.com/DataSheets/PaperBackWeb(5x8)042006.pdf

You can see their web site at: http://www.itwatchdogs.com/