Datacenter monitoring down to the wire

Monitoring your datacenter has always been done by a mix of software and hardware, with monitors reporting back to centralized application software. This monitoring reports on the health, performance and availability of the applications and equipment that is running in the datacenter. With careful instrumentation, a datacenter operator can monitor the end-to-end activities of all that goes on in their environment.

But the introduction of Quareo, from TE Connectivity, adds a new dimension to monitoring your network hardware. Their Connection Point Identification technology basically chips each of your network cables with a hardware monitoring device while still fitting in a standard form factor network connector. Their intelligent cables are available for copper and fiber networks and allow the monitoring of every piece of data that crosses that network connection. And in an era when different cables support different levels of performance, and the introduction of a lower rated cable can cause difficult to trace problems, this type of monitoring can also allow rapid resolution of a problem that would have otherwise required every cabling change to be rechecked to troubleshoot.

This direct monitoring of the physical layer of network connectivity means that Level 1 network management, the physical security of a network, is now possible without any sort of "interpretation" of data derived from other sources.  Administrators will be able to get a real-time network map that includes data about the status of the cabling that links together all of their critical business resources.

TE Connectivity might be a new name to you, but the company, until recently, was known as Tyco Electronics, the well-known data and power products manufacturer. Apparently, they tired of being asked about model train production.