Do you keep spare switches or replace on a rolling programme?

[kennysarmy]

Just wondered what others did?

 

We have around 30 edge switches but only keep 1 spare....

 

I don't specifically plan to replace older ones unless they fail but maybe we should....

 

Comments?

[irsprint84]

We're on lifetime guarantees plus only ever seem one die in my IT life (was power surge)

[jdude768]

I keep one on hand, for those emergency cases, but because of the uptime on those, I have only needed it once in 5 years.

[webman]

We don't have as many switches, but have two spare - one fibre and one RJ45. This allows us to suffer a core switch failure as well as one switch in "satellite" cabs.

 

If your switches have a proven track record of reliability you can probably get away with just one, but just make sure that as soon as you need to use the spare one you get another one in or the broken one repaired ASAP.

 

If you have sufficient budget though, it won't hurt to have another 1-2 "just in case".

[tmcd35]

I've often thought about this, but done nothing about it! I have two or three spare 24 ports (I think). And our 'second' switch is an identical model to the primary root switch. So I think I can cobble somthing together in a disaster. I'm 99.9% sure the core switch(s) is covered by a lifetime warrenty, HP ProCurve - they normally are. As for planned replacements, nope. I know it's bad but I'm having enough troubles funding everything else and keeping the rest of the server room up to spec.

[tech_guy]

As we replace old with new we always keep the old ones that are in good condition as spares in case something blows - as happened last week when we had a power cut.

[CyberNerd]

one spare and have a rolling 5yr replacement

[jcs808]

We have 39 switches in use here. I have 4 spares sitting on a shelf, where they've been for the last couple of years. We used to have a real problem with power surges, and as we can't afford to put our switches on UPS some cheapish serge protectors from Wilkinsons did the trick.

[enjay]

Like others, we keep one basic one in spare and then buy replacements as and when they fail (typically only in power cuts or when unplugged, I find). It would be a shame to have bought a 100Mb spare a few years ago and find that when you come to need it, the norm is 1Gb.

[gshaw]

One or two spares and we replace only as part of an infrastructure update (last lot went from Allied Telesyn things to lovely Procurves although still on 100Mb as the cost of redoing all the cabling and all the switches was too much to do Gb to desktop)

[teejay]

All HP Procurve with lifetime warranty here. Have a couple of header switches spare from when we upgraded to cope with a new extension which can use if needed and a couple of spare mini gbic fibre modules.

We've no plans to replace any of them, 100Mb to desktop is perfectly sufficient and the core is running at 10Gb and 4Gb so no problems there.

[maniac]

Our core switch is knocking on a bit now, but still works well - HP procurve can't recall the model of the top of my head. Over the last 2 years I've been sytematically replacing our edge switches to managed HP procurve ones as and when we've expanded different parts of the network, and I've managed to get rid of a majority of the old Planet switches we had kicking about on the system - although 1 still remains in a distant corner of the network. I've got a few Alled Telleson switches which are years old, but do have GB fibre modules in them so these are my spare in-case-of-failure switches - l also still have some of these in use on the system, but they seem very reliable and fast so until they go wrong they won't be replaced - hopefully they'll see us through to our new building which will have all new switch gear throughout when it's built!

[enjay]

still on 100Mb as the cost of redoing all the cabling and all the switches was too much to do Gb to desktop

 

Cat5e is fine for Gb. We decided not to make a specific move to Gb, however the PCs have had Gb cards in for a few years and each time we've needed new switches, we've bought Gb ones (swapping them into the IT Suites and cascading 100Mb ones elsewhere), so now our backbone, IT Suites, Library and Admin are all on Gb.

[Soulfish]

We're replacing full core + edge network this summer due to some (well lots!) of problems with the current network equipment and setup. We'd have 1 spare edge switch, but with a redundant core (so 2 x core switches) and NBD warranty. Not looking to replace any of this for 7ish years based on the level of kit we're speccing.

[localzuk]

I don't keep any spares here - if we need replacements, we can source them next day anyway. Plus they're all HP Procurves with their lifetime warranty.

[sidewinder]

Got some old switches spare, and even our old core switch, but in reality if one did die it would be replaced next day anyway so probably wouldnt bother. It just makes me feel safer having 'something'

[AngryTechnician]

I have 1 spare for emergencies - all of ours are HP Procurve on lifetime warranty, but recent experience has shown that if HP happen to be out of stock of the one that goes pop, it can be weeks until your replacement arrives.

[enjay]

"Next day" can be a long time away if the switch dies at 3pm, i.e. just after the cut-off for next day. They could therefore be without connection from 3pm Monday until 5:30pm Wednesday. If it was the Admin Dept or IT Suite switch which died, this length of downtime might not be acceptable.