Loose cables normal?

DMag · 1st June 2008

I'm evaluating a hosting company at the moment and have had two outages.

One, a server was unavailable because apparently the power cable was loose. Another time, a switch cable was loose which meant several of my servers went offline.

To give them credit, they fixed the problems quite quickly once they were reported but should the cables have come lose at all? Is this one of those things you have to expect from time to time or is twice in less than a month suspect?

JamieBeeston · 1st June 2008

In all my years in the industry, I've never ever experienced this.

J

LeaUK · 1st June 2008

Quote:

a switch cable was loose which meant several of my servers went offline.

If the RJ45's (Ethernet connector) positive locking tag has been broken then unfortunately Ethernet cables can come loose. However assuming these leads were not your responsibility then that's a little poor in my experience.

Quote:

apparently the power cable was loose.

IEC leads VERY rarely come out on their own, however the Medical industry often insist they are mechanically fixed - but again personal experience highlights coming loose on their own is very unlikely - more like poor cable management and someone tripped over the lead, or someone pulled the server out the rack and consequently the power lead also!

Give them a little more time and be fair, but anymore issues then you really should make a decision whether to stay.

Lea

Karl · 1st June 2008

It's not unusual for servers with add-in NICs to have the cable come loose, as often the slots are badly designed and it stops the locking clip engaging properly - we've got some IBM servers like this with add-in NICs. However, in you case it seems like they are going through the book of semi-plausible excuses to fob you off with.

CrystalVPS · 1st June 2008

We've had both come loose but this was primarily when RH were being careless when performing requests, and since we've moved to BlueSquare from Redbus, this hasn't happened once. So I'd say, yes it's possible but only with careless people poking around in the racks.

nitrohosting · 1st June 2008

Again, we've had this once or twice with Redbus remote hands working in our rack when we were there a couple of years ago.

SynergyWorks · 1st June 2008

Same as - only ever experianced this in Redbus.

othellotech · 1st June 2008

In a DataCentre environment, their is a *lot* of vibration, constantly, mostly due to the aircon units, so much so that its a H&S issue for staff working there for long periods ...

So yes, stuff works loose, but its very infrequent and insignificant in the general causes of things going down.

Cat5's work loose at the server end if the NIC is a piece of cheap-sh!te, any engineers at the rack are careless, they're not fitted properly in the first place, or the cables are cr@p

Cat5's work loose at the switch end due to vibration, they can also wear the port out, and the cheaper the plugs the more often they go. Changing the cable, changing the port or changing the plug usually fixes it.

IEC loose at the server end - never heard of that - the electric connector is ~15mm long, so that would have to be either yanked out or not put in correctly in the first instance to work loose.

IEC at the power bar end - not if they're fitted correctly, and cable tied down as we do.

As to the frequency of this sort of thing - human error is (relatively) common in untrained technicians, and it of course depends on the type of cabling you use, type of switches, how many servers etc.

This year i've known *TWO* data cables out of >5000 need replacing, one was simply losing the connection intermittently. The other the retaining clip snapped off when removing it from the server to pull the server for a memory upgrade.

JamesSykes · 2nd June 2008

With some server/iec cables you really need to give them a good push so that they connect properly and I've seen a few pop out after the lightest of touches. So yes it can be done especially if it wasn't properly secured in the first place.

Oh and I make sure all servers are cable tied.