Data centers must meet constantly evolving needs. Trends such as increasing power density, cloud computing, edge computing, and data analytics ultimately place differing demands on the data center. This often requires that improvements be made to existing facilities to enable the facility to meet the new demands. This process often is referred to as “retrofitting”.

Data center infrastructure monitoring is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. There are many parameters you could monitor:  power, energy, temperature, humidity, pressure, etc. There are also multiple levels in physical and organizational hierarchy that monitoring could be deployed at:  main feeds, PDUs, cabinets, busways, servers, etc. Obviously, you want a system that supports as many parameters as possible and covers them throughout the hierarchy.

What is sometimes forgotten, however, is the dimension of time. Good monitoring also takes place on multiple time scales.