Integrity 2Gb fibre card failure rate

[Olivier Masse]

Hi

Since a year or so, I've been noticing an above average failure rate on 2Gb fibre cards, all across the product line. I won't give numbers, but it's high enough for me to be concerned. Each time, replacing a faulty card fixes the problem so it's not an issue with the switches or the cabling.

Last month, I was told that up until then, the failure rate has been within an acceptable range for all HP customers except us. This might be the result of pure bad luck, but nevertheless I'm asking anyway: anybody else had similar issues with a high failure rate? If so, have you officially reported it to HP or simply went on with a replacement to be done with it?

Thanks

[kris rombauts]

Olivier,

what model of the 2 GB FC HBA do you talk about, any productnumber or partnumber in particular since there are Qlogic and Emulex cards out there and different generations of those cards.

What are the failure symptoms and what is logged at the OS level in the log files, any consistency there i.e. ?

What firmware rev's are those cards on ?
What is the average age of the cards that failed (months, years ?)



Kris

[Olivier Masse]

I've been through these questions before with HP Support.

My problems affect the 2gb/s AB465 and A9784, which are combos which I think are Qlogic-based. They were all purchased around the same time, and we have a bunch of them.

This is not a driver problem, as rebooting or power cycling the server doesn't fix the card. It's not a firmware or cabling issue either, since replacing the card (offline or with OLAR, I've been through both) with another one that has an identical firmware version reactivates the port.


Thanks

[Olivier Masse]

Just to follow up to your question, I've extracted some driver dumps when the cards go offline but nobody wanted them so I don't do it anymore and just replace it. The cards are around two years old.

[Olivier Masse]

(moving up)

As a follow-up, I'm now having an EXTREMELY HIGH failure rate on a batch of A9784A and AB456A 2Gb FC cards that were all purchased in early 2007.

The SFPs on the failing cards are all made by Avago. The replacement parts have mostly Intel SFPs and I have not seen any fail up until now.

I'm sharing this to warn those of you who purchased similar cards in the same timeframe to 1) check them regularly using fcmsutil to be sure there is a link and 2) ensure they're under service contract.

Olivier