DCIM, sensors and airflow troubleshooting
Use DCIM and environmental sensor data well: know what each sensor measures and where it should be, read thresholds and trends, keep alarms meaningful, catch stale or mislocated data, and trace hot spots to their cause before touching anything.
- Level
- Intermediate
- Length
- About 50 minutes
- Contents
- 3 lessons · 1 video · final exam
- Status
- Published · updated 1 Oct 2026
Skills you'll practise
- Describe what a DCIM system records and which sensors feed it, and where inlet sensors belong
- Read sensor maps and trend charts to separate local airflow problems, cooling failures and bad data
- Identify stale, frozen or mislocated sensors and correct the records
- Set out a safe troubleshooting sequence for a hot spot and keep alarms meaningful
Course outline
- 1.DCIM, sensors and airflow troubleshootingVideo · 2 min
- 2.What DCIM knows and where the data comes fromLesson · 14 min
- 3.Thresholds, trends and alarm hygieneLesson · 13 min
- 4.Tracing a hot spot from the dataLesson · 13 min
- 5.DCIM, sensors and airflow troubleshooting: knowledge checkKnowledge check · 17 questions
- 6.DCIM, sensors and airflow troubleshooting: practical exerciseKnowledge check · 1 question
- 7.Hot-spot alarms that don't add upScenario
- 8.Final exam5 questions · passing it completes the course, so people who already know the material can test out
Sources it draws on
The lessons and questions are written from these references, so learners can go back to the original.
- ASHRAE TC 9.9: Thermal Guidelines for Data Processing Environments
- ANSI/TIA-942: Telecommunications infrastructure standard for data centers
- General data-center operations practice
See it with your own jobs and topics
Tell us about your team and we'll walk you through setup, from choosing jobs to your first skills check.