HP Procurve 1810-24G switches keep resetting

[Fardringle]

I have submitted a ticket to HP Support about this issue a couple of times but they haven't been very helpful so far so I'm hoping someone here has some ideas.

I have two HP Procurve 1810-24G switches that keep resetting themselves back to factory defaults. It has been happening anywhere from 1-2 times a week to 1-2 times a month. A couple of times, both switches have reset within a few minutes of each other, but most of the time it is just one of them that does it. It seems to be completely random when it happens. No power flickers, no unusual activity on the network, and nobody in the office except me even knows how to log in to them. Both switches are connected to UPS batteries. I have even moved them so they each have their own separate UPS battery to eliminate the possibility of power problems. When it happens, all users on the affected switch lose their network connectivity and they can't get an IP address from the DHCP server again even after the switch finishes resetting until they manually repair the network connection with IPCONFIG /RESET and /RENEW or they reboot the computer.

When the issue first started happening, both switches were using the P.1.17 firmware, which was the newest at the time the switches were purchased. I upgraded them to the newest available firmware version P.2.2 and the switches actually stayed up for more than a month after that but they have started doing the same thing again.

I really don't care about having the settings at factory defaults since there aren't any special settings being used on the switches, but losing network connectivity is a big problem since most of the people in the office use a database system that gets very upset (corrupting files) when the workstations lose their connection to the server.

 

[ch33zw1z]

How close are the serial numbers? Could be hardware problem, but isolated to a certain range of devices...

How old are the switches? Any chance for RMA?

 

[theevilsharpie]

If you haven't done so already, I would change both the switch's superuser password and the SNMP community string to rule out the possibility that some rogue employee or management application is making configuration changes.

Otherwise, I'd press for an RMA.

 

[Fardringle]

The serial numbers are actually pretty far apart. They were purchased at the same time 2 years ago, but were not from the same batches (one had firmware version 1.1.3 and the other had 1.1.14). They have a lifetime warranty so RMA shouldn't be a problem except that I can't be without them for any time at all so I have to do an advanced exchange and HP Support wants 'proof' that it's a hardware problem before they will do that.

I know that nobody else knows the router password, and I very highly doubt that there are any management applications running on the network since I know all of the devices and software that are being used on the network, but it's worth a try just to eliminate the possibility. Thanks.

 

[ch33zw1z]

The serial numbers are actually pretty far apart. They were purchased at the same time 2 years ago, but were not from the same batches (one had firmware version 1.1.3 and the other had 1.1.14). They have a lifetime warranty so RMA shouldn't be a problem except that I can't be without them for any time at all so I have to do an advanced exchange and HP Support wants 'proof' that it's a hardware problem before they will do that.

I know that nobody else knows the router password, and I very highly doubt that there are any management applications running on the network since I know all of the devices and software that are being used on the network, but it's worth a try just to eliminate the possibility. Thanks.

how do they define proof?
what kind of support data can you gather from the switches?

 

[Fardringle]

how do they define proof?
what kind of support data can you gather from the switches?

I can't get any useful data from the switches, unfortunately. When this happens they lose all of their settings, including the logs, back to the factory defaults so there aren't even any reports of what is happening on the switches right before they reset themselves.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Do you have any need for the managed switches? If not, pickup a couple unmanage switches while you RMA. They're good to keep on hand anyways.

HP may agree to send replacements first if you pay shipping.

 

[thecoolnessrune]

Check their memory use. We have some clients whose ProCurves were doing exactly as you described. They had 4 switches that would randomly reset. Turns out they were crashing when memory use would spike to 100%. One switch was doing it every week, while 2 other switches are doing it roughly every month. The 4th switch seems fine. They separated the switches and moved the iSCSI traffic to a different switch and that improved the situation. Currently they have just one switch (the worst) one that still seems to have a steady leak, so they set it to reboot once a week. That seems to have stopped it from randomly crashing. HP, as in your situation, has been plenty unhelpful in getting it resolved.