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Monitoring Building and HVAC Infrastructure

Keith Bromley

Monitoring of heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) infrastructures has become a key concern over the last several years. Modern versions of these systems need continual monitoring to stay energy efficient and deliver satisfactory comfort to building occupants. This is because there are a large number of environmental sensors and motorized control systems within HVAC systems. Proper monitoring helps maintain a consistent temperature to reduce energy and maintenance costs for this type of infrastructure.

By deploying Ethernet-based taps, building personnel and network managers have easy access to data from HVAC systems. After taps are installed, a network packet broker (NPB) is used to aggregate data from the various taps. The NPB will capture, filter, and regenerate specific pieces of data as needed and forward that data on to individual application performance monitoring (APM) tools that can be used to examine the data.

The NPB also provides the internal ability to load balance data to multiple APM tools. This allows IT personnel the ability to deploy n+1 survivability. The traffic load is divided up evenly across the number of allocated tools. Should one or more of the tools fail, the data is still split evenly across the remaining number of tools. If the number of tools is dimensioned correctly, there will be no loss of data.

The solution ends up looking like the following:


The monitoring solution described here provides the following benefits:

■ Reuse of the existing Ethernet infrastructure

■ 24 x 7 remote access to the HVAC data and system controls

■ Cost reduction due to faster alerting of system problems

■ Deployment of n+1 survivability for HVAC monitoring tools

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Monitoring Building and HVAC Infrastructure

Keith Bromley

Monitoring of heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) infrastructures has become a key concern over the last several years. Modern versions of these systems need continual monitoring to stay energy efficient and deliver satisfactory comfort to building occupants. This is because there are a large number of environmental sensors and motorized control systems within HVAC systems. Proper monitoring helps maintain a consistent temperature to reduce energy and maintenance costs for this type of infrastructure.

By deploying Ethernet-based taps, building personnel and network managers have easy access to data from HVAC systems. After taps are installed, a network packet broker (NPB) is used to aggregate data from the various taps. The NPB will capture, filter, and regenerate specific pieces of data as needed and forward that data on to individual application performance monitoring (APM) tools that can be used to examine the data.

The NPB also provides the internal ability to load balance data to multiple APM tools. This allows IT personnel the ability to deploy n+1 survivability. The traffic load is divided up evenly across the number of allocated tools. Should one or more of the tools fail, the data is still split evenly across the remaining number of tools. If the number of tools is dimensioned correctly, there will be no loss of data.

The solution ends up looking like the following:


The monitoring solution described here provides the following benefits:

■ Reuse of the existing Ethernet infrastructure

■ 24 x 7 remote access to the HVAC data and system controls

■ Cost reduction due to faster alerting of system problems

■ Deployment of n+1 survivability for HVAC monitoring tools

Hot Topics

The Latest

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

Image
Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...