4 Common Server Issues and Troubleshooting Examples – Ask the Engineer [VIDEO]

Ask the Engineer


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Jack Kauter Published: February 13, 2023

Jack Kauter and Park Place Technologies Chief Technology Officer of Managed Services, Chris Carreiro, discuss the question – “What can be done to prevent the most common server faults when it comes to hard drives and motherboards?” in this month’s Ask the Engineer.

 

Jack: Hi everyone and welcome back to Ask the Engineer. I’m pleased to welcome CTO, Chris Correro to this episode. Chris, how are you doing?

Chris: Great. Thanks Jack. Thanks for having me.

Jack: No problem at all Chris. Today’s question is regarding server faults. More specifically, what can be done to prevent the most common server faults when it comes to hard drives and motherboards?

Chris: Absolutely. Let’s go through each one of them.

First on the list would be hard drive failures. The most common hard drive failure probably be mechanical, electrical, even a logical disk failure.
These occur when they’re either dropped or exposed in an unfavorable environment, if there’s a voltage spike, overheating, even data corruption, improper registry changes, accidental drive formatting.

When a hard drive fails, admins use common tools like FSCK or check disk within Windows to check and repair those logical errors.

Building redundancies via RAID can also prevent these failures from becoming a real big issue.

Jack: Yeah, absolutely. And what about failures from motherboards?

Chris: So motherboard failures – those usually include overheating, electrical failures, or physical damage and sometimes even humidity problems.

Preventing these types of errors come from ensuring proper air flow to the device. Verify that the device is stored at the proper temperature.

A static charge, power surge or even electrical spikes can cause malfunction.

Be sure that if you’re performing a hot swap, you don’t accidentally contact the system.

Or leverage a surge protector in the environment.

Jack: Yeah, absolutely.

Chris: Moisture in the air and electronics don’t really mix well and can create corrosion in short circuit issues.

Jack: Yeah, absolutely. Well, it sounds like there’s a lot that could potentially go wrong with servers if you fail to take those preventative measures, right?

Chris, thank you so much for your time and sharing this helpful information with our listeners.

Remember guys, just reach out if you have a question for one of our engineers.

Until next time, we’ll see you on Ask the Engineer.

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About the Author

Jack Kauter,
As an Online Marketing and Analytics Manager, Jack is responsible for Digital Marketing initiatives with a primary focus on EMEA and APAC. His responsibilities extend to supporting the Sales team, orchestrating campaigns, generating leads and more.