4 Common Server Hardware Failure Causes & Troubleshooting

As a supervisor or Data Center Manager, you've, in all probability, paid your hour dues a minimum of once in your career. Whether or not it's returning into the info center within the middle of the night or disbursal hours upon hours poring through logs and troubleshooting server hardware to seek out the causes of server failure, information center management will be a headache.

Whether you're doing a little preventative analysis or present within the interior of server troubleshooting, this short guide can assist you in gaining clarity regarding the foremost common server issues.

Server Hardware Failure Statistics

You may be tasked with maintaining a company information center or providing consumer hosting; however, either method, outages will leave a pit in your abdomen. Once a period strikes, your servers and networking hardware are the standard culprits. Eightieth of all outages in information centers result from server hardware.

The only common type of server hardware failure is a difficult-to-drive malfunction. 80.9% of all losses return from HDD malfunctions. Thus it's forever the primary place to seem.

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4 varieties of Server Failures

When it involves server issues, there are four main classes that you simply ought to concede to resolve any problems quickly.

1. drive Failure

Spinning disks are notoriously fault-prone. Whereas the median period of associate HDD is simply over six years, many things will fail before then.

Causes of drive Failures

There are 3 common causes behind the Failure of laborious drives:

• Mechanical Failure

• Electronic Failure

• Logical Failure

Common identifiers for mechanical problems embody clicking and scratching noises. Common causes are being born, jarred, or exposed to unfavorable environmental conditions. Electronic Failure will happen throughout voltage spikes or if hot. Last, logical failures from information corruption, improper written account changes, or accidental drive information.

Beyond plugging in an exceedingly new drive or attempting completely different cables (which may lead to information loss), admins will use command-line tools like fsck for Linux machines and chkdsk on Windows to examine and repair logical errors for server troubleshooting.

Of course, building redundancy via RAID or a distributed parallel filesystem will facilitate forestalling these failures from turning into a difficulty. Choosing solid-state drives (SDDs) also mitigates these risks, particularly mechanical failures.

2. Motherboard Failure

Motherboards are maybe the only troublesome common server downside to alter. It will be laborious to inform whether or not the Failure is thanks to the motherboard itself or another piece of hardware connected to it.

Causes of Motherboard problems

There are 3 common causes of motherboard malfunctions:

• Overheating

• Electrical Failure

• Physical

Overheating, the foremost common server hardware issue happens for some reasons. Blockage within the fans will forestall the cooling system from correct functioning. Heat or wet surroundings will cause thermal asphyxiation. Betting on your current data center infrastructure management stack, you'll be able to typically monitor air quality and temperature events before they cause system failures.

Electrical Failure will occur thanks to short-circuiting if any metal encounters the motherboard whereas it's running, like accidental contact throughout a hot-swap. A static charge on a technician's finger or a loosely fitted part may also cause circuit malfunctions. Power surges and spikes are common culprits. Thus it's necessary to leverage surge protectors.

Physical harm to your server and storage infrastructure parts is a smaller amount common in information centers. Impacts on the rack or a liquid spill will spell disaster. However, at a minimum, they're easier to diagnose.

There's forever the likelihood that the hardware has merely reached its finish of life (EOL). A high-quality motherboard will last ten to twenty years; thus, if you're running gift instrumentation in your information center, this might be an element.

3. Power supply Failures

Blackouts, brownouts, fluctuations caused by severe weather and poor electrical infrastructure within your building or information center will cause surprising power outages. Power supply failures will result in frustrating errors, server crashes, and irreversible harm to your IT operations.

Causes of Power provide issues.

Some of the common causes of power provide disruption embody the following:

• Environmental

• PSU hardware problems

• Faulty connections

Lightning strikes, power outages caused by storms, and different environmental factors will produce issues in providing power to servers. The simplest thanks to defend against power outages is an uninterruptible power supply (UPS), a particularly crucial tool for decreasing your server hardware failure rates.

It's additionally potential to possess power problems at intervals with the server itself. The facility provides a unit that gives power to the motherboard that may malfunction, either within the type of fault within the unit itself or within the cabling. Typically, all it takes is to exchange a cable or unplug it and plug it back in.

4. Air Quality and Temperature Failures

The final puzzle piece is fastidiously dominant the climate within your information center. A correct HVAC system is as necessary to server maintenance as hardware and mending.

Causes of Temp/Air Quality problems

Common server hardware problems will be the results of the subsequent environmental factors:

• Overheating

• Dust

• Humidity

Overheating will contribute to the thermal asphyxiation that we tend to mention top, and it's the most reason that server rooms are typically unbroken between sixty-four and eighty-one degrees F (18-27 C). mud will clog fans and heatsinks and may later result in heating. Humidness additionally has to be controlled. Wetness within the air and physical science don't combine well, and humidness will produce issues like hardware corrosion or short-circuiting.

Avoid Server Failure with a trusty Partner.

Troubleshooting your server hardware is frustrating. However, it doesn't need to happen to the slightest degree once you have the right information center and networking improvement partner in your corner. Navigator Systems has provided third-party Server and Storage maintenance for over twenty years and may assist you in maximizing your period.

Whether your operations are better suited to post-warranty support paired with 24/7 information center hardware observation or managed server management services, we can offer you the support you wish.