EVA5000 FC Switch Life

[jhetrick]

Does anyone have any idea on how long a FC switch for the EVA5000 is rated to last?

[Víctor Cespón]

No idea, but after a few hundred EVA5000 cases, that's not one of the parts that fails often.

[jhetrick]

What are the most common failures besides hard drives?

[Rob Leadbeater · Accepted solution]

Hi,

After the disks, I'll guess that the next most common thing to fail is the cache batteries.

Going back to the original question, were you referring to the loop switches in the EVA5000 or the the SAN switches to which the EVA and the hosts are connected ?

Cheers,

Rob

[jhetrick]

Hi Rob,

If you have experience with both then it would be great to know how long each of the lasts. I have a rather old EVA 5000 that I am in charge of and just wanted to prepare myself :-) Our EVA is at least 6 years and I think it was purchased used then! Thank you!

[Rob Leadbeater]

Hi,

I don't think I've seen either fail to be honest... I've had the odd PSU fail on a HP (rebadged Brocade) SAN switch, but most have dual power, so no great problems there.

I don't recall ever seeing an issue on any loop switches, except perhaps a flakey GBIC/SFP. On early EVA5000s you had fibre connections between the switches and the disk shelves. Later models have copper cables with "built in" SFPs which are less prone to breaking.

Hope this helps,

Regards,

Rob

[Patrick Terlisten]

Hello,

I can report some failed disks and cache batteries. After that some SFPs, but most hostports SFPs. No failed controllers or loop switches.

Best regards,
Patrick

[Uwe Zessin]

The next thing after the disks and the batteries is the power line.

Unfortunately, all back-end switches I've seen so far do not have redundant power supplies :-(

And I also had some discussions with Brocade who do not put redundant power supplies in some front-end switches. The argument is that a power supply does not fail that often -- to which I respond that power lines go down more often (true failure or maintenance reasons) than power supplies fail.
The difference between theory and practice...

[jhetrick]

Great thank you all for your feedback it is much appreciated!!