A non-intrusive system which monitors a data center by detecting electromagnetic waves alleviates a resource burden on components and is inexpensive to deploy and scale within a data center. The system detects waves using omnidirectional antennas positioned throughout the data center, thus alleviating the need to physically attach directional antennas to components. The system performs a learning phase wherein representations of detected waves are mapped to occurrence of events within the data center. Once the learning phase is complete, operation of existing network monitoring tools, such as agents and probes, may cease, and the system may begin monitoring for events based on the detected waves. The system may also analyze wave data prior to the occurrence of events to identify event prediction indicators, e.g. distinctive wave values or patterns, which may be used to predict the occurrence of an event.