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The moment a loose fan cable took down a whole server rack in Dallas
I was swapping drives in a colo facility near Love Field when a zip tie snapped and a case fan wire got sucked into the PSU, shorting it out and tripping the breaker for the whole rack. Took me 45 minutes to find the right replacement PSU and get everything back online. Has anyone else had a tiny cable mistake cause a full outage like that?
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nathan_webb21d ago
The zip tie thing is a classic case of penny pinching biting back. Those cheap nylon ties get brittle over time especially in a colo with AC cycling. You'd think they'd spec metal locking ties or at least double the cables down. I had a similar thing happen with a stray screw that rolled under a motherboard tray and shorted the standoff pin. Whole server just died mid migration. Now I use kapton tape on every exposed fan wire and I replace zip ties every other year whether they look bad or not.
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the_gavin22d ago
Honestly, a zip tie snapping is such a dumb way to take down a whole rack. Did you check if the PSU fan itself was jammed or if it was just the cable hitting the breaker?
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