Spare devices. How to extend their life?

[Marcos Martinez Garcia]

Hello everybody,

I would like to know the best way to extend the life of spare equipment, like routers, switches or APs.

Which  is better, keep them connected to the network without configuration and  configure them if necessary, or save them off and switch them on when  you are going to remplace a broken device?

The first  option allows you to monitor the spare devices and if it fails you can  send a new one so you can be sure that your spare is always ready to be  used.

With the second option would be necessary to  connect them each month to test whether they still work so turn them on  and off many times may be dangerous. But maybe the device will need more  time to be broken if it is switched off.

Do you know if Cisco has documented these issues?

What is your personal experience? Any ideas?

Money and energy is not an important problem in this case.

Thank you so much, your help is very appreciated,

Marcos.

[turnera]

Not sure if this helps you or not:

In our business area, we have spares that are "on the shelf" (in the supply area). While we will load a router or switch with a configuration that aligns with one of the more critical boxes within our network structure, for the most part the spares stay powered off and are stored in the supply area.

We do not have the real estate within our operational area to keep hot spares in a rack.

[Marcos Martinez Garcia]

Thank you for your answer Turnera. Why did you choose this option?

Regards,

Marcos.

[turnera]

Marcos,

The main reason is lack of real estate in the racks to house hot spares. There is simply no room for spare routers/switches to be staged in the operational racks. The customer is ok with the ability to have a router/switch down for a short period of time once it is detected. And have one pulled from the forward supply area and installed. We load configurations into the router/switch that is pretty close to what would be required for operations. So when one does fail, it is replaced, and the replacement is then updated with any of the differences between what was loaded initially to what its operational requirements are.

Sometimes it is a direct replacement with no changes, and sometimes it takes some config changes to get it fully operational but the overall downtime is hours verses days if we were to have to initiate a supply request from some off site location.