What’s Wrong With This Picture?

Here is a picture of the inside of an Intel Server System SR1630HGP looking from the front of the unit towards the back:

On the left side of the picture is the Intel RAID Controller RS2BL040 that drives the three 450GB 15K SAS drives in a RAID 5 array.

There is a black plastic air duct that runs from the blower pair near the front of the server to the CPU heat sink that we see here and also the memory DIMMs near the top right of the image.

After a closer look, it became clear that there would be an air flow problem for the CPU heat sink! 8|

Yes, it is 90 degrees in the _wrong_ direction.

Fortunately, one of the habits we have before we fire up a server for the first time is to double check all of the settings, connections, cables, and other components.

A sort of pre-flight check if you will.

We do that because we never know and we can not assume that we will get things right every time.

To boot, there are just too many distractions happening at the same time when we are as busy as we are. Even when the day is quiet and we may not be fully attentive to what we are doing and miss even a small thing such as the right port to plug a cable into.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer