Server rooms are critical components of facility computing equipment. With the right sensor setup, you can safely maintain proper server room temperature, humidity, and leak-free conditions.
If your facility contains a server room supporting the full suite of computing needs for your buildings and staff, the last thing you want to worry about is whether the environmental conditions are going to remain stable enough to provide efficient and uninterrupted support for your campus. Understanding proper temperature and humidity levels for your equipment rooms, as well as installing the correct monitoring solutions to track those levels, is vital to maintaining a robust, stable server room temperature and environment.
Importance of Environmental Controls for Server Rooms
Maintaining server room temperature and humidity is not as simple as setting your thermostat and walking away. It is vital to employ room temperature monitors, humidity sensors, and even water leak detectors to ensure the server room maintains an environment conducive to continuous operability and minimal disruptions. The average cost of server downtime varies according to organization size, yet industry research from survey data shows that companies with over 1,000 employees lose $100,000 per hour, highlighting the importance of keeping your equipment in operable conditions.
Recommended Data Center Environmental Specifications
By 2029, The Natural Resources Defense Council reports that data centers will make up 10% of total U.S. electricity demands, which will place unprecedented burdens on electrical grids. This demand will require data centers and servers to be operating at maximum proficiency, with which temperature and humidity play a large role. The American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) recommends the following temperature and humidity guidelines for data center classes A1 to A4:
- Dry-bulb temperature: 64 °F - 80 °F (18 °C – 27 °C)
- Relative humidity: 50% - 70%
Using Monitors to Maintain the Proper Server Room Environment
Understanding the proper operating parameters for your server room is crucial to keeping your facility's computer system running. But that knowledge is also dependent on a network of environmental monitoring solutions that can track changes and immediately alert you to any variations from the expected settings. From room temperature and humidity monitors to water leak detectors, you need to ensure you have the proper combination of monitoring technology to keep an eye on server room temperature and other conditions that protect your electronic assets. Given the amount of time server rooms are unoccupied, these solutions should also be able to alert you if any of those conditions ever depart from the acceptable range.
The OneVue Sense® Temperature and Humidity Monitoring Solution can ensure a long lifespan and minimal downtime for your server room equipment. This solution monitors room temperature and humidity levels, and the cloud-based OneVue® Software platform is a mobile-friendly solution to check measurements and prove proper compliance. Because server rooms require strict conditions, HVAC systems usually work constantly, making for a higher risk of a water leak. The OneVue Sense Water Leak Monitoring solution tracks unwanted water intrusions, giving users early warning of a leak that could prevent a costly flood.
Both of these automated monitoring solutions allow users to set custom thresholds and receive alerts instantly via e-mail, text message, or phone call if server room conditions ever stray outside those ranges. The OneVue Sense technology and OneVue Software platform combined data tracking and reporting capabilities satisfy the real-time monitoring and reporting advised by ASHRAE for optimal server room performance.
Interested in learning more about how Primex can help keep your server room operating as efficiently as possible? Reach out for a consultation today.
This blog was originally written in 2019 and updated in 2026 with up-to-date content.
