My power supply took out a whole server rack last Thursday

Was doing a routine swap on an old HP ProLiant and the PSU literally sparked when I plugged it back in. Fried the backplane on 3 drives before I could yank the power cord. Anyone else had a PSU fail that catastrophically or was mine just cursed?

2 comments

2 Comments

terry_jones2d ago

Three out of three times I've had a PSU go on an HP server it just clicked off quietly without taking anything with it. Sounds like your backplane was already on borrowed time and the spark was just the final nail.

faith6842d ago

Whoa, wait, three out of three times? That's wild. I've never seen a PSU just click off like that on any server I've worked with. Usually when mine let go, it's a big bang and a smell that sticks around for days. I guess you've been lucky with yours, or maybe I just have the worst luck on the planet. It's hard for me to believe a backplane was already failing without some warning signs like errors or reboots first. Sounds like you got the clean version of a power supply death, while I get the fireworks show.