Manage What You Measure: The Value of Legrand’s SmartSensor Portfolio

June 20, 2024

Measurement is a basic part of our lives. We’re all familiar with measurement technologies, from thermometers to gas gauges, that help us make day-to-day decisions in our personal lives by helping us understand our environments and make better decisions, from grabbing a sweater as we run out the door to making a quick trip to the gas station.

Measurement also matters in business. Though it’s impossible to be sure who first said, “you can’t manage what you can’t measure,” it’s an important idea. Businesses like yours thrive by using metrics to make operational decisions, and you can’t have metrics without a way to capture data. 

In the data center world, that’s especially true. Environmental data is the key to making operational decisions for your data center. Whether you’re a VP of Infrastructure for an enterprise, a data center engineer at a colocation company preparing to build new AI infrastructure, or the owner of a carrier hotel, you know the value of environmental measurement. Data collection in your data center underlies all your efforts to improve performance, resilience, and efficiency. And those efforts are especially important as we continue to cope with an uncertain business climate that’s resulting in “do more with less” strategic direction from your leadership. Efficiency matters more than ever before. 

But old approaches to data center monitoring aren’t keeping up with the business pressures you’re facing. Monitoring by walking around, though familiar, has its limits, especially as many organizations are deploying IT equipment in remote locations that can’t be easily reached. Monitoring your environments with server baseboard management controllers or Datacenter-ready Secure Control Modules are a start, but cannot provide all the environmental data you might need, including humidity and vibration, to keep your data center running optimally…for better business performance. 

Whether you’re expected to cut costs or PUE, you can’t do your job without environmental data. That’s why Legrand has continued to develop and expand its family of SmartSensors. SmartSensors give data center providers a new set of tools for data center operational optimization. Bringing together intelligence and environmental monitoring into conventional enterprise data centers, colocation facilities, edge deployments, small server rooms, and even telco huts and utility sites, Legrand gives organizations of all sizes a better way to monitor, measure, and manage their operations with a simple way to acquire critical data. 

What can SmartSensors detect? Our portfolio lets you monitor: 

• Temperature 
• Humidity 
• Airflow 
• Differential air pressure 
• Water/leaks 
• Dust/particles 
• Contact closures 
• Proximity/motion 
• Vibration. 

By connecting to Raritan® Xerus-enabled power management devices, you will quickly and efficiently start gathering data across your facility without disruptive interruptions due to installation. Simply plug SmartSensors into your intelligent rack PDUs, smart rack controllers, inline meters, rack transfer switches, and branch circuit monitors using standard Cat5 patch cables, and you can begin gathering real-time insight in moments. 

SmartSensors keep monitoring simple. They’re highly accurate with metering accuracy at ±1°C for temperature and ±5% for relative humidity. They can be deployed as a single chain of multiple sensors up to 30 meters apart, and support setting thresholds for smart alarming. They’re a proven way to help your field personnel discover problems faster than ever before. 

They’re also designed for impact. You can seamlessly integrate them into your DCIM suite, giving your operations team, across all your locations, added real-time insights. Whether they’re using the data to avoid hot spots and bypass recirculation, monitoring the Heat Index to ensure worker safety, monitoring secure access to remote utility closets, or using the data to make strategic design decisions for greater energy efficiency, SmartSensors give your company the visibility it needs to succeed. 

Designed to meet the standards and needs of data centers, labs, facilities, network/compute closets, or remote locations like colocation, point of presence (POP), and telecommunication sites, SmartSensors are a robust, streamlined, interoperable, consolidated solution for obtaining critical environmental data. With them, you have a new way to measure what happening…so you can manage it. 

To learn more about Legrand’s portfolio of SmartSensors visit https://www.raritan.com/products/power/rack-management/smart-sensors.