Network Ground to a halt. Help!!!

[sLiDeR]

Hi,

 

I have 4 switches on my network with static green LED's that have just developed. They are the HP Procurve 2650 48 port switches.

 

Initially I ended switching of ALL the switches & shutting down the servers. Eventually bringing them back up isolating the problem switches....or what I believe to be the problem switches.

 

Now I dont believe that 4 switches can suddenly develop a hardware failure.

 

2 of the switches are cascading of a main switch via UTP. The main switch is fine, but these two are static green. Its the same case for the other 2 switches in a different location on the network.

 

What are your thoughts?

[FN-GM]

Maybe it could be a loopback?

[sLiDeR]

no mate

[FN-GM]

Have you tried isolating it to one switch? Surely it can't be all 4

[tin]

Do the LEDs stay if you disconnect all ports? That would put a finger on if you're facing a hardware or config/layout problem.

 

Also don't want to state the obvious but I suspect it's worth saying - is the LED mode switch on the right mode?

[sLiDeR]

When I disconnected the link cable from the affected switch to the main switch the lights still remained on!!

 

Ill next try disconnecting all the ports & see what the prob is, if I can find it!!

 

Clearly I need to add redundancy. Can you think of any reasons why I wouldn't turn on STP on the switches??

[Michael]

On HP switches (as I'm sure with other brands), you can view LED status in various ways. On page 1-4 on the HP2650 manual, it talks about LEDs.

 

Hope this helps

[Lithium]

http://docs.hp.com/en/A-CPCCO-1E/A-CPCCO-1E-0807.pdf

 

Had a look at LED Diagnostics?

[Geoff]

Also connect to the switches via the serial console. Check the logs and port information.

[sLiDeR]

Well, ive shut the enitre network down & rebooted. All seems fine except 3 swtitches that the procurve manager cant see. I reckon its because they on DHCP &picked up a different address.

 

Trouble is, in procurve manager on the default vlan their IP address was wrong. When I enter the correct address & save the configuration, they become unreachable.

 

Do I have to delete them from the vlan & re add? makes no sense!

[FragglePete]

Seems odd to have a switch on a DHCP address.....

 

Connect to the Console via a Serial Cable and get into the management screens. Should have kept all the settings though, so it's a bit worrying.

 

Pete

[Michael]

It might be worth resetting those switches to factory default. Using a pencil, push into the pin hole for a good 5 seconds. The switch will then reboot. I wonder if the switches are picking up a foreign IP of some kind, or the equivalent of a 169.x IP in Windows?