Just had a client's server crash because of a dusty power supply

I was at a small law firm in Cleveland last Thursday when their file server just died mid afternoon. No warning, no errors, just a hard shutdown. After digging around for 20 minutes I pulled the PSU out and it was caked in dust bunnies like someone had been using it as a vacuum. A can of compressed air and a replacement PSU later, everything was back up but I lost an hour of billable time. Has anyone else run into a simple fix that seemed too obvious after the fact?

3 comments

3 Comments

marywilson24d ago

Woah, wait, dusty enough to fully crash a server? That's wild. I mean, I've seen dusty PSUs before but never one that straight up killed the whole machine. You'd think a law firm would have someone blow out the electronics every now and then. A whole hour of billable time gone because someone let the dust bunnies take over. That's one of those things where you laugh about it later but in the moment you just want to scream. Glad you got it fixed though.

paige33124d ago

Did anyone check if there was a mouse or something nesting in there too? I found a dead lizard in a desktop once that shorted everything out.

the_mary24d ago

Did you see that post about a cricket causing a server fire at a university?