Keeping its huge data center humming is vital at NASA Ames Research Center, where 4,000 scientists are working on aeronautics and biotechnology projects. When a new custom-built air conditioning system couldn't keep the research outfit's network equipment at the right temperature, it was the IT department's equivalent of a space mission gone wrong.

"It failed miserably," says George Alger, assistant division chief of the applied information technologies division and IT services manager. He worried that the A/C fluctuations threatened to disrupt or even damage the 50 racks of servers and switches housed in the Moffett Field, Calif., data center.

"The air conditioning should have maintained 68 degrees to 70 degrees in the room, but it didn't," Alger says about the custom-built system, which cost about $800,000.

NASA Ames became aware of the high and low temperature spikes because two physical-security sensors from NetBotz continuously monitor the data center's environment.

Positioned on the wall, the NetBotz sensors send e-mail and paging alerts about problems discovered in temperature, air flow and other conditions over NASA's LAN to a monitor dedicated to physical security that is manned 24-7.

The NetBotz findings convinced the IT department it had to rip out the air conditioning system and start over this year.

"We scrubbed the entire design," Alger says. NASA Ames accepts the blame for the data center's AC problem, which it corrected through closer coordination between the IT department and various designers and contractors.

The boxes can detect other data center threats, such as smoke, and can hear the sounds of uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) calling for attention.

NASA Ames uses products from other vendors to monitor other factors, such as the presence of specific gaseous substances like hydrogen, which can be given off by some older UPS batteries. "Hydrogen concentrations coming from batteries can be explosive," Alger says.