EkkoSense IoT system measures data centre cooling

EkkoSense, a specialist in data centre thermal risk, has launched what it says is "the world's first monitoring solution to track data centre cooling loads in realtime". 

The company claims data centres could improve overall energy performance by up to 30 per cent by using the new technology. The internet-of-things device is called EkkoAir, and the company says it can be simply fitted to any cooling unit in a matter of moments. The company says the device wirelessly allows operators to monitor thermal instabilities right across the data centre, and "unlike traditional data centre approaches", the EkkoAir monitoring solution offers information in realtime. Dr Stu Redshaw, EkkoSense’s chief technical officer, says: “Building a cooling strategy based on plate ratings might have once seemed smart, but it’s an outmoded approach that has systematically led to both under-cooling or over-cooling, resulting in either unacceptable thermal risks or unnecessary energy consumption right across our industry. “Thanks to innovations in low-cost sensor technology, IoT, gaming technology and cloud, EkkoSense has now been able to bring a completely new level of thermal monitoring performance to market, providing data centre operators with the ability to not only visualise and understand their own data centre thermal instabilities, but also identify the individual cooling units that are causing the problems in the first place. “By taking the guesswork out of data centre cooling, EkkoAir provides operators with the real-time information they need to really start addressing the inefficiencies that currently make cooling their largest operational overhead.”