4 Common Server Hardware Failure Causes & Troubleshooting

BY: MICHAEL JENNINGS

Data center management can be rough. Many data center managers and system administrators have probably ‘paid their midnight dues’ sometime during their career. This could’ve been done by going to the office during the night or spending multiple hours troubleshooting server issues.

In this guide, you will increase your knowledge about common server issues.

Server Hardware Failure Statistics

Whether you’re asked to maintain a data center or provide third party server support, it can cause a hole in your gut. When downtime occurs, the usual culprits are your networking hardware and servers. Actually, 80% of outages in your data center stem from server hardware. The most known form of server failure is malfunctions with hard drives; 80.9% of failures are from HDD malfunctions.

As a server ages, the likeliness of a failure increases. At year one, there is a 5% server hardware failure rate, and an 18% failure rate at seven years. IT server maintenance for post-warranty equipment is offered by Park Place Technologies. Contact us to extend the lifespan of your equipment.

4 Types of Server Failures

Below are four categories to consider when dealing with server issues.

1. Hard Drive Failure

Many spinning disks cause issues because they are especially fault-prone. The average lifespan of an HDD is about six years, but many things might cause issues before the six-year mark.

Causes of Hard Drive Failures

Hard drive failures can be caused by:

• Mechanical failure
• Electronic failure
• Logical failure

Mechanical issues are identified by scratching and clicking noises. Most times these issues are caused by being exposed to negative conditions, jarred, or dropped. Electric failure happens when overheated or during voltage strikes. Logical failures happen from inadequate registry changes, unplanned drive formatting, or data corruption.

Furthermore when you plug in a new drive or test unique cables (which might cause data loss), administrators use equipment like fsck for Linux machines and chkdsk on Windows to repair and check consistent mistakes for troubleshooting.

To help the failures from becoming a problem, you can rely on distributed parallel filesystem or building in redundancy via RAID. To help mechanical failures, solid state drives (SDDs) are necessary.

2. Motherboard Failure

A common and difficult server issue to encounter is a Motherboard fault. It’s hard to know what caused the actual failure. It can be caused by the motherboard or another connected fragment of hardware.

Causes of Motherboard Issues

Three examples of motherboard failures include:

• Overheating
• Electrical failure
• Physical

Overheating is the greatest cause of server hardware issues. This can happen for a number of reasons, one being obstruction in fans which prevents the cooling system from working properly. Another reason is humid or warm environments triggering thermal throttling. Most times, with your data center infrastructure administration stack, you can inspect temperature and air quality before it causes major issues.

Short circuiting can cause electrical failure. Loosely fitted components or a static charge on an engineer’s finger can initiate circuit faults. Surge protectors are important because spikes and power surges are regular problems.

In data centers, it’s less common to have physical damage to your storage and server infrastructure components. Liquid spills or impacts on the rack can cause major disaster, luckily, they are easy to diagnose. And there is always a chance the piece of equipment has reached its EOL. A superior motherboard has a lifespan of 10 to 20 years.

3. Power Source Failures

Fluctuations, blackouts, and brownouts are caused by poor electrical and severe weather which can cause sudden power outages. This will cause power source crashes to lead to permanent damage to your operations, server crashes, and frustrating errors.

Causes of Power Supply Problems

Power supply disturbance examples are:

• Environmental
• UPS hardware issues
• Faulty connections

Environmental factors such as storms which cause power outages, lightning strikes, and other environmental factors can create difficulties for providing power to servers. To be safe from power outages, uninterruptible power supply (UPS) is essential.

Power issues can happen inside the server. The power supply unit which provides power to the motherboard can also crash because of error in the unit or the cabling. Restoring the cable or unplugging it and plugging it back in can help.

4. Air Quality and Temperature Failures

It is important to control the temperature inside your data center with an appropriate HVAC system.

Causes of Temp/Air Quality Issues

Some environmental factors caused by server hardware issues include:

• Overheating
• Dust
• Humidity

Critical process server rooms are kept between 64–81 degrees F (18–27 C) because overheating can cause thermal throttling. Fans being clogged by dust and heatsinks can also hint to overheating. Additionally, humidity should be regulated because it can create troubles such as hardware deterioration or short circuiting.

Avoid Server Failure with a Trusted Partner

When you have the right data center partner, troubleshooting is made much easier. Park Place Technologies provides third party data center maintenance and will increase your uptime. We provide the best support for your specific needs, whether that is post-warranty support corresponding with 24/7 data center hardware monitoring, or fully managed server management services. Contact us for support!