A systems administrator is called to investigate a physical server that has become unresponsive. The administrator is forced to perform a hard reboot to bring the system back online. While reviewing the server's baseboard management controller (BMC) hardware logs, the administrator finds several critical entries from just before the crash indicating that 'CPU 1 temperature has exceeded the shutdown threshold.' No other hardware errors were logged at that time. What is the MOST likely cause of this system crash?
The correct answer is CPU overheating. The key piece of evidence from the baseboard management controller (BMC) logs is the specific alert that the CPU temperature exceeded the shutdown threshold right before the system crashed. Modern servers and CPUs have built-in thermal protection that will automatically shut down the system to prevent permanent hardware damage from excessive heat.
A faulty memory module typically causes different symptoms, such as a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD), kernel panic, or specific memory-related errors in the logs, not a temperature warning. Corrupted system files are a software issue, not a hardware failure, and would likely result in boot errors or application-level problems rather than a hardware-level shutdown preceded by a temperature alert. A failing PSU would cause an abrupt loss of power but would not generate a CPU-specific temperature warning in the hardware logs before the event.