localzuk Posted February 9, 2012 Posted February 9, 2012 We have an interesting problem here where our switches would have been covered by a lifetime warranty, but they were bought in the name of our old managed service provider. So, although they're only 3 years old, they're all out of warranty! We have around 20 Cisco edge switches and 2 units which make up our core (3560-48/24 models for edge, mixed with 2960-48/24s, and 3750s as the core). So, its all good gear but a lack of warranty is worrying somewhat. How often do others replace their switch gear? Especially if it is out of warranty?
NikChillin Posted February 9, 2012 Posted February 9, 2012 When it dies... we have no budget so that is the only way to upgrade.
sonofsanta Posted February 9, 2012 Posted February 9, 2012 Usually when it breaks, although I am heavily considering replacing the core switches as some of them are getting pretty old, and I don't trust 3com gear all that much at the moment. The one in the switch cabinet next to me, on the other hand, is likely getting replaced next week once I've been able to pull it out, confirm that it isn't an angry bee trapped inside making that noise and giving me a headache, and that a new switch is the only way to maintain my sanity going forward. Such an annoying, angry, whiny, scratchy, random, irritating, infuriating, endless sort of noise... for 7 hours... aaaaaargh... :cries:
elsiegee40 Posted February 9, 2012 Posted February 9, 2012 When it breaks. We had our first unit fail last term - 6 1/2 years after installation.
IrritableTech Posted February 9, 2012 Posted February 9, 2012 Normally when it breaks, however after finding some cash last year we replaced the whole lot which had been in for ten years.
localzuk Posted February 9, 2012 Author Posted February 9, 2012 So, even if its out of warranty, you'd wait until it breaks? Surely this is a bit of a major weakness in ensuring uptime? Most of us have rolling programmes on desktops, laptops, servers etc... but the bit which holds them all together can fail and potentially leave the network down for multiple days? That idea doesn't seem good to me.
IrritableTech Posted February 9, 2012 Posted February 9, 2012 me? No. I probably should have said that the majority of the gear we replaced was procurve life time warranty stuff so it was replaced FOC when it failed (and we had some spares hanging around). The only other couple of failures in the past were cheap things put in before my time that only serviced a few devices. It's all PC lifetime warranty now, and we have boat loads of the old bits to call on if we needed to.
glennda Posted February 9, 2012 Posted February 9, 2012 Well we have now upgraded all our switching to a stable platform across the school. HP 2610's with a mixture of 24 port and 48 port with a few poe around the place. We don't plan to replace any of these for 5/6 years or until the need for 1GB to the desktop is proven worthwhile (and the kit comes down in price). With the 2610's being lifetime warranty* the risk of failure is negligible and we keep a spare switch in the store incase so we can swap out if needs be. The Core is an E5406Zl which is also still under warranty and i can't remember the warranty on that although i think its similar. *limited until they stop manafacturing + a few years I think
featured_spectre Posted February 9, 2012 Posted February 9, 2012 In my old place....as and when it broke. Now...I don't have to worry!
andydis Posted February 9, 2012 Posted February 9, 2012 E5406Zl = awesome beast :-) love the procurve stuff
NikChillin Posted February 9, 2012 Posted February 9, 2012 So, even if its out of warranty, you'd wait until it breaks? Surely this is a bit of a major weakness in ensuring uptime? Most of us have rolling programmes on desktops, laptops, servers etc... but the bit which holds them all together can fail and potentially leave the network down for multiple days? That idea doesn't seem good to me. We have some spare stuff about but with no budget we don't have a choice, no - it isn't good but if something breaks they have to wait. We have found that the switches tend to play up prior to falling over which has given us a window of opportunity. You have to work with what you've got.....
3s-gtech Posted February 9, 2012 Posted February 9, 2012 Mostly, when it breaks. I have been replacing some of our older D-Link gear with Procurve when I've had funds, but I have plenty of D-Link switches still in place and giving good service. Was tempted to replace the core as it's ancient (DES-6000) but it's such a damn fine piece of kit, I'll leave it. Have just added some Procurve stuff around it.
pete Posted February 9, 2012 Posted February 9, 2012 Before it breaks*, when we need to bump capacity. *there's generally warning signs in Cacti and Nagios. And we have sufficient spares to swap them out in 10 minutes.
Paid_Peanuts Posted February 9, 2012 Posted February 9, 2012 HP Procurve infrastructure all with lifetime warranty - 40 switches from 2648 to 5406 been in 4 years and touch wood never had an issue. Have 2 spares incase to minimise downtime. Not had to use the lifetime warranty yet. No intention to replace any time soon.
elsiegee40 Posted February 9, 2012 Posted February 9, 2012 So, even if its out of warranty, you'd wait until it breaks? Surely this is a bit of a major weakness in ensuring uptime? Most of us have rolling programmes on desktops, laptops, servers etc... but the bit which holds them all together can fail and potentially leave the network down for multiple days? That idea doesn't seem good to me. In our case, it didn't cause a problem. We were able to swap another one in from a little used building and the replacement arrived next day. Impact was very small... barely noticed.
Soulfish Posted February 9, 2012 Posted February 9, 2012 At the moment we've got a brand new network of Cisco switches, but I'd be planning to replace them in 5-7 years. Main need for replacement would be to increase bandwidth, or add additional functionality such as newer forms of PoE etc.
GrumbleDook Posted February 9, 2012 Posted February 9, 2012 When kit goes in you plan for the life expectancy of it, including how long it is going to be out of warranty, whether you can purchase extended warranties (which you should be able to with that kit) and also if you have any idea of the lifecycle of the OS on it. You know how much it costs to buy the kit so you spread the money you squirrel away over the number of years you expect it to live. In reality we know that folk don't carry this money forward but they can plan for when they have to find the funds and prioritise certain things. It does get a little more complex when you find that you need to replace the equipment due to increased requirements and so you have to look at how much of the investment has been used so far (e.g. you are 3 years into a 6 year life expectancy) and work out if you can make use of the kit elsewhere, etc ... the usual sort of moving stuff around really. When kitting out a new ICT Suite and working out how much it all costs then the infrastructure costs should be worked in as well. A desktop PC might cost £500 to get from Supplier X but the software adds a cost, as does the network infrastructure ... you know that you will replace the desktop after x years ... and so factor that into your budget, but also do the same with the infrastructure.
Oaktech Posted February 9, 2012 Posted February 9, 2012 basically, i have 2 things that make me lose sleep at night... number 1 is the failure of our primary DC, that would be a bad monday morning... and one of our 4, core switches dieing, that would be a 'why don't we just all go home because we are screwed till tomorrow' scenario as we don't have a backup, and we don't have a spare. it's a procurve 5406 with a crazy amount of routing in it. we could plug up a cascade of other stuff and the main site would sort of work, but our primary school would be completely without dns/dhcp/cmis/internet untill we got it back. Its under a rolling 12month warranty/replacement contract with the supplier, but the supplier doesn't keep the monsters in stock. replacement is only likely when the whole shooting match starts getting unreliable to the point that it inconveniences those who hold the purse strings
CyberNerd Posted February 9, 2012 Posted February 9, 2012 I work to a 5-6yr rolling replacement. A switch shouldn't be out of warranty after 3 yrs. Sometimes we upgrade before end of life as it gives us a chance to move out out core or near edge switch further out into the network. This follows my belief that the network is the core of our infrastructure. It is the single most important piece of IT equipment in the building, more important than the MIS, the email system, the broadband and the active directory. without a reliable network there is no MIS, AD, internet, anything Our next purchase it to replace 4X 5500G's with 4x HP A5800's (with multiple 10Gigabit links). This will allow us to have 40Gigabit connections to the blade centre (opposed to 6Gb/s shared between 12 servers). We'll then use the 5500's as near edge switches, complete with 10gigabit uplinks.
Sylv3r Posted February 9, 2012 Posted February 9, 2012 We use HP Procurve switches here too and have done for the last 5 or 6 years. No need to have used the Lifetime warranty as yet and have spare switches that can be configured with the LAN configuration and dropped in where necessary. I even have a spare Core Chassis that I picked up from ebay relatively cheap and if our existing one was to fail, I could easily swap the modules to get us up and running again in an hour or two.
MatthewL Posted February 9, 2012 Posted February 9, 2012 Ours tend to be replaced as they fail and if and when they are needed to to support various things i.e. VoIP, Wireless.
john Posted February 9, 2012 Posted February 9, 2012 I tried to a rolling programme but it just would take to long to do and funds were too tight, we then had an urgent need to get VLANs across the site PDQ for a campus wide BYOD program to go with our campus wide Ruckus, so I managed to secure funding to replace all the switches at once, great in some respects but not in others. I expect this lot to last a minimum of 5 years, its Juniper and all lifetime warranty stuff so should be pretty bulletproof I would love a rolling programme but it might take a long time to catch fully up / do them all when you have about 30 switches and when buying big name L3 switches you need a few £K per switch and have a very small budget.
alttab Posted February 10, 2012 Posted February 10, 2012 the 3750E/G is a very useful switch to use as a core. Earlier 3750G's and later 3750E's can be intermixed in a redundant stack configuration although negotiating down to the slowest stack technology i think. Configuration is effectively shared among members as a new stack master would be promoted should there be that kind of failure....Would keep one or two spares of those for sure. Would also keep spares for the edge aswell, have used all of the models of switch you've mentioned and never had any reliability issues. The only think have had fail in seven years is a shortwave sfp gbic which died. It may be worth speaking to a cisco partner regarding what kind of hardware coverage they can provide for your inventory of cisco gear.
Mr.Ben Posted February 10, 2012 Posted February 10, 2012 The answer is when it's broken or when there is an excellent reason to do so. This year will see me complete the program of replacement that I started 5 years ago. The replacement program was to replace all of the unmanaged switches that the LA specified when they managed the school.
localzuk Posted February 10, 2012 Author Posted February 10, 2012 the 3750E/G is a very useful switch to use as a core. Earlier 3750G's and later 3750E's can be intermixed in a redundant stack configuration although negotiating down to the slowest stack technology i think. Configuration is effectively shared among members as a new stack master would be promoted should there be that kind of failure....Would keep one or two spares of those for sure. Would also keep spares for the edge aswell, have used all of the models of switch you've mentioned and never had any reliability issues. The only think have had fail in seven years is a shortwave sfp gbic which died. It may be worth speaking to a cisco partner regarding what kind of hardware coverage they can provide for your inventory of cisco gear. Keeping spares of £3k - £5k switches wouldn't go down well in many schools... The edge switches are a mix of PoE, 48 port, 24 port etc... So, we'd need to get spares of the best model we use to ensure we have coverage there, and again, they're £2k+ Speaking to a cisco partner is a good idea though, will do that Monday.
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