earthing stories ...
There are so many. I was working at a global company and we were managing appliances all other the globe.
They were very reliable and apart from 1-2 issues out of 100 IT appliances, we were doing good.
Except from the 3 appliances in our indian site: their MTBF was 1-2 months max. All 3. Which was a real issue, because shipping a new one there, once the next one was totally fucked (mobo burnt) would cost us too months (logistics in India, you'd love it).
It took us a while to remotely figure out what was happening. In fact, there were 2 separate electrical lines, and each appliance had one PSU linked to the first and the second PSU to the second.
After a dozen of such failures, I asked the local dude, to plug both PSUs from one appliance to the same line. 3 months in, this very appliance was still doing allright, while the 2 other had their usual failure rate.
Explanation: electricity standards are ... different in India (read: shit job is the norm) and the dude that did the 2 lines of the DC, somehow didn't link the 2 lines' earth properly. There was different voltages between the 2 PSU earths, and it regularly killed the mobos.
Solution was quick: we put all appliances PSUs onto the same line, and never had any failure ever since !
Biting the hand that feeds IT
