News

HP Addressing BladeSystem Power Supply Failure

January 11, 2009 by Jeff Shepard

Hewlett-Packard (HP) announced that a power supply failure in HP BladeSystem c7000 enclosures can cause the whole BladeSystem to fail.

According to an HP advisory note, "HP has identified a potential, yet extremely rare issue with HP BladeSystem c7000 Enclosure 2250W Hot-Plug Power Supplies manufactured prior to March 20, 2008. This issue is extremely rare; however, if it does occur, the power supply may fail and this may result in the unplanned shutdown of the enclosure, despite redundancy, and the enclosure may become inoperable."

HP’s advisory continues, "BladeSystem c7000 Enclosure Power Supplies manufactured on or after March 20, 2008, and dc-powered enclosures (typically utilized in an Integrity blade environment) are not affected. To ensure stability of your computing environment, HP is providing a power supply identification utility to enable customers to identify potentially affected power supplies. Supplies identified by the utility will be replaced by HP."

The advisory concluded, "HP has been made aware of a very small number of incidents involving power supply failures in the BladeSystem c7000 enclosure. Because customer service and product quality are top priorities for HP, the company is working with HP BladeSystem customers to replace all potentially affected c7000 power supplies purchased by customers."