Temperature monitoring
in critical infrastructure.

IT, telecom and critical infrastructure equipment have operating ranges defined by ASHRAE and by the manufacturers. Going outside those ranges, even for a short period, can trigger protective shutdowns, shorten service life or cause failure. The problem: critical events rarely happen during the hours of human monitoring.

Reference operating ranges

ASHRAE (American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers) defines environmental classifications for IT equipment. For class A1, which includes servers and most critical infrastructure equipment, the operating limits are:

• Temperature: 15 °C to 32 °C
• Relative humidity: 20% to 80%

The range recommended by ASHRAE for equipment air intake is narrower: 18 °C to 27 °C, with humidity between 40% and 55%. Operating within the limits does not mean operating in the ideal range.

Each piece of equipment has its own specification defined by the manufacturer. The ASHRAE values are a class reference, always consult the datasheet of the installed equipment for the specific limits.

Temperature and humidity: two distinct risks

The two parameters cause different problems:

• High temperature: accelerated ageing of components, activation of thermal protection with automatic shutdown, risk of failure.
• High humidity: condensation on circuits, corrosion of contacts and traces, intermittent or permanent failure.
• Low humidity: build-up of static electricity, risk to components sensitive to electrostatic discharge (ESD).

What continuous monitoring detects that periodic inspection does not

Cooling failures rarely happen during business hours with staff present. The most critical events tend to occur at night, on weekends or holidays, when the air conditioning fails without anyone noticing.

With continuous monitoring and threshold-based alerts, the responsible team is notified at the moment of deviation, not at the next scheduled inspection.

In addition, monitoring records gradual trends that spot checks do not capture: a cooling system that loses efficiency over weeks raises the temperature slowly, but the history reveals the pattern before failure.

Multiple environments, centralized view

Distributed operations, such as data centers in different locations, technical rooms on separate floors or units in separate cities, need a consolidated view without sending staff on site. A centralized platform tracks every environment on a single dashboard, with a unified history and alerts per environment.