Insight Environmental Configuration User Guide

Appendix 107
Appendix
Preparing the floor plan background image
The background image is a floor plan of the data center in PNG format. A background floor plan image
is required for each project.
You must include the following information in your background image:
• All racks, CRAHs/CRACs, base stations, gateways, PDUs, walls, doors, and floor tile lines
• The differentiation between the cold aisle and hot aisle of each rack
• A transparent area ("Creating a transparent area" on page 107)
Creating a transparent area
Before a background image is added to a project, you must include transparent areas. Transparent areas
enable HP Insight Environmental Imaging to display through the floor plan.
Only areas where sensors are installed can be transparent. Typically, areas 3 m (10 ft) away from a
sensor are nontransparent, as well as racks, PDUs, and cabinets.
The HP Insight Environmental Observer displays only the thermal color representation of the transparent
areas on the background image.
NOTE: You can create a transparent area in your PNG graphic image with many image
editing programs. The following steps use the open source graphic editor Gimp. To download
the latest Gimp tool, see the Gimp website (http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html
).
To create a transparent area:
1. Start the image editing program.
2. Select File>Open to open the image file where you want to add the transparent area. You can open
a floor plan image in any graphic format supported by the image editing program.