Optimal Monitoring of Server Rooms with Home Assistant Platform

Abstract

High-performance IT systems with high computing power resources, used especially for processing large volumes of data or performing laborious calculations at significant speeds, are installed in special server rooms. Such a room specially built for High-Performance Computing systems, also called HPC, involves soundproofing and fireproofing of the walls, air conditioning equipment, as well as permanent monitoring of the room with a series of sensors, among which can be mentioned: temperature and humidity sensors, smoke sensors, air quality sensors, water and flood sensors, motion sensors, video cameras for realtime remote viewing. Given the wide variety of smart devices on the market equipped with such sensors, it is advisable to choose a suitable software environment, which offers the possibility to integrate, monitor, and control all these smart devices. One of the most popular free, opensource automation applications is Home Assistant. This software platform brings an improvement in the server rooms through the capabilities of monitoring, automation, and notification of events through text messages (email, SMS) or acoustic and video alerts. The paper presents an IoT implementation of a server room monitoring system, applied at INCD INSEMEX headquarters.