Monitoring the temperature
"It's not that expensive."
No, but it might be politically impossible.
A/C failure, equipment room 35+ degrees - detected because the noise of the CPU fans desperately trying to cool the gear down was audible from outside. Afterwards I checked, each rack had an APC environmental monitoring unit, wired to ... nothing.
"WTF?" sez I to the Operations manager.
"Simples", he replies, "HVAC & environment belongs to the Facilities Management guys, and they refuse to accept any inputs / connections from the ICT group. Seems like they don't actually monitor their own gear though. Pity."
"So why not connect the rack sensors into your all-singing, all-dancing SNMP monitor system?"
"Oh no, I'm not allowed to connect HVAC / environment sensors into my network, they belong to FM"
AC to protect the guilty.
[actually, that ops guy has been moved sideways, so maybe I should have a quiet word with his replacement ...]
Biting the hand that feeds IT
