Lesson(s) for today. Power Supply indicators lie.

Even with UPS and a Generator something ALWAYS seems to fail durring a power failure no matter how many precautions you have taken.

1. Just because both power supplies are green and fully operational does not mean they are functioning properly.

2. Pull your power supplies one at a time and test regularly ( quarterly ) to ensure they can handle a full load on power failure in another unit doing a simple pull the plug..technique.

Case in Point today.

In our Server room we have two sets of power strips. One for house power and another for UPS Power. We wire up our Storage and Servers that have redundant power supplies so one power supply is on house power and the other is on UPS.

House Power Fails.

Storage *should* continue to run on UPS/GEN on power supply #2. That did not happen. The entire Jbod went out. In the mean time the power came back on and the unit powered up, and both power supplies showed green. I scratched my head and first though maybe just maybe it was cabled wrong, so that both were cabled to the house power. I took the opportunity (since all our avid storage was now down).. to turn off all the jbods and check the entire electrical path. With the Server off and just the jbods on, I turned the house power off and the same jbod turned off, while the other was on and working fine on a single power supply on the UPS power.

I swapped the positions of the power supply to also ensure it was not a chassis issue either. Same power supply that showed ( green ) failed.

DAM YOU SUPERMICRO!!!!!

Now I want a 45 Drive Bay JBOD Chassis with 3 or four power supplies and wire two up to the UPS and one or two to the house power.

Mine only have two, so today I was SOL.

-S