Servers and fan replacements

I replaced one of the cooling fans on one of the group servers this morning. The process was relatively painless. From powering down the server to powering it back up with the replacement fan took less than 30 minutes of actual work.

The old fan was still spinning, but the server's on-board diagnostics were complaining that it was bad. On shining a flashlight onto the spinning unit, it did appear to be spinning slower than the rest of the units - so we figured that replacing it was probably a good idea.

It was much easier to do it early in the semester when people aren't using the machine that much. This made it easier to find a time slot when no one else was logged on, since replacing the fan requires that we power down the machine.

Now I get to go look at the machine about once a week to make sure that the error lamp stays OFF. :)