Turning Off Switches

[Netwacky87]

Hiya guys,

 

Quick question and i know im gonna get slated for it...

 

Can you turn off switches safely? Im pretty sure you can but i wanted to check, Ive gotta put 2 switches into a cabinet (both with fibre optic link)

 

But to get the switches in ive gotta turn them off, take out all the cables, put the switches in the cabinet and connect everything back up again,

 

Would i have a problem once i turn the switches back on? I dont want to go and do it and then "bugger" it up lol

 

Cheers

[Heebeejeebee]

I've never had a problem. Some switches take a minute or so to fully boot up again so don't worry if it looks like there's no connectivity straight away.

 

It's not as if they give you much choice about pulling the plug. With most switches there's only the mains lead and at best an on/off switch. Some of our switches give you the option to reboot in the management consol but not to shutdown.

 

HBJB

[Domino]

in theory you should be fine....

 

In practice I've had a few switches die as soon as they've been disconnected from the power.

 

All in all I think you just after bite the bullet and go for it.

[enjay]

You should be fine - what you're doing by unplugging them is no different to simulating a power cut anyway. I've only once had a switch which didn't come back up after turning it off, but that was so old that I was glad to get rid of it; all our newer kit has been fine.

[MicrodigitUK]

The only problem I’ve ever had with switches is the darn fans ceasing up because they have been running continually for such a long time the loobe has dried out.

 

Also don’t get any dust in the fibre sockets. Once I got some brick dust in one of my GBIC modules on the switch and had to get it replaced because the dust scratched the fibre socket and the light couldn’t get through correctly.

 

[Nij.UK]

what switches do you have there?

 

I think you should be fine with just unplugging them.

 

Are the switches you are thinking about bringing down be configured to do VLANS etc? as an additional safety step, you could just download the config of the switch and if anything was to happen you would be able to just reload the config on the switch and all would be back up and running again

[Netwacky87]

Hi all, thanks for the replies

 

There both HP switches and i dont think i will have any problems but i just wanted to check ill just take the chance and unplug them.

 

Cheers

[Nij.UK]

HP switches do tend to be very good and i dont think you will have any issues with them, i used them at my previous work and i know a lot of people on edugeek use them aswell.

[MicrodigitUK]

You should have said they are HP earlier! Just unplug them HP are really good switches and I think most of there ProCurve kit has a life-time warranty any way. If it brakes you can just send it back!

 

[Oops_my_bad]

yes if it's HP you should be fairly safe - just make sure you have saved any config into "non-volatile" - I dropped a bollock a few months back by switching off a switch which had all kinds of VLAN crap setup - unfortunately the person who had been configuring it before me forgot to save the config 8O

[Joedetic]

I would have thought the only problems is when you dont save configs. I'm not sure what the HPs are like with regards to saving config etc but I know i've spent 30 minutes working out ACLs on a cisco router (or vlanning on a switch like TeddyKGB) only to bounce the power and then thing "oh crap, i didnt copy running-config to startup-config in the nvram" *sigh*

[k-strider]

lol yeah been there done that!!!

[Geoff]

On procurves. You can just do 'show config' from the manager context in telnet. It'll spit out all the commands you need to get from the default configuration to how it's set up.