Diagnosing Electrical Issues |
Understanding the basics of the electrical distribution system will help administrators diagnose data center electrical issues. Power is delivered to a data center by the local utility company. Once inside the building, the utility power goes to the Automatic Transfer Switch and to the uninterruptible power supply (UPS) units. These units clean the incoming utility system before passing it to power distribution units (PDUs) for conversion. Power will finally be distributed to electrical outlets and servers. During the distribution, power loss or instability can occur. It can be caused by voltage or AC/DC conversion, hence the importance to monitor voltage and power supplies. Monitoring Voltage Monitoring voltage will help you verify the quality of your power supplies and detect system instability. Voltages that are too low or too high may lead to unpredictable system crashes. For example, if the power supply is weak, the voltage level on the motherboard will not be steady, which could lead to random crashes or to errors at the processor or memory levels. To better diagnose electrical issues:
Monitoring Power SuppliesAfter hard drives, the power supply is the device that is most likely to fail. The proper operation of this device highly depends on the quality of the data center electrical distribution. Indeed, voltage fluctuations are detrimental to power supplies: they can shorten their life span or impair them. In the console, double-click the Status parameter of the SEN_NAP_7|C_POWERSUPPLY application class to verify the power supply has not failed or is not degraded. Several power supply failures may reveal an issue on the data center electrical distribution.
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