topic Re: FirePOWER Module Power Outage = Death in Network Security

FirePOWER Module Power Outage = Death

leighharrison — Fri, 21 Feb 2020 15:37:03 GMT

Hi Folks,

I've got a customer who has had some issues with FirePOWER modules after power outages in that the module corrupts.

We've raised this with their support partner and we've been told that it's pretty much expected behaviour. In that if a FirePOWER module drops power without a graceful shutdown, then there's a high chance it will corrupt.

Can anyone comment if this IS expected behaviour? Surely a module should survive a power outage? If that's the case, who in their right mind would put one in?

Best, Leigh

Re: FirePOWER Module Power Outage = Death

Rahul Govindan — Wed, 11 Apr 2018 04:51:21 GMT

Seems suspect. There is obviously a chance that a corruption could happen in such cases. But I do not believe this is expected behavior in any way. It feels like your customer may have either bad hardware or a buggy software version. I would have TAC look at this to see whats causing these failures.

Re: FirePOWER Module Power Outage = Death

Oliver Kaiser — Wed, 21 Nov 2018 15:03:10 GMT

Unfortunately database corruption is a possible side effect of power loss. I had a Webex with TAC this week and can confirm that this is an architectural issue that is being worked on. I cannot confirm that this affects firepower modules as well, but FTD on FPR2110 (<= 6.2.3.6) is definitely affected. It doesn't happen with every crash but it looks like under certain conditions power loss can brick the database beyond repair. (one of the matching bug IDs: CSCvc77158)