Cisco up/downtime

[alliasneo1]

Hi everyone,

I just had a generic question regarding Cisco devices. Whats a general rule for the uptime of a single device in an enterprise environment? Can we generally configure them and then leave them for years and years or is a general rule to have protocols in place for maintenance downtime so you can re-boot etc?

Thanks

[Durga Prasad M.S]

Hello Darly,
Though years of uptime might give you bragging rights :-) it is best practise to update the ios with every stable or maintenence release.
That would result in maybe a year of uptime everytime if everything else goes well.
Sometimes yearly security audits would also throwup results recommending updates if applicable to you.
In summary in today's security conscious world, long uptime does not mean everything is good in that setup.

Regards/DP

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[Reza Sharifi]

Hi,

Usually, with Cisco devices, your don't need to reboot them unless you need to upgrade the IOS, have enabled a feature that requires reboot, there is memory leak, IOS crash and bugs, etc...

If you don't have any issue with the device and it is working fine, there is usually no need to reboot.

HTH

[Leo Laohoo]

I have seen switches with 3 years uptime.

This may seem like a "brag" but I frown upon it.  3 years means the IOS running is very, very old.  This means the IOS also may have security vulnerabilities, that Cisco has since flagged, and it HAS NEVER BEEN addressed.  Same with bugs.

Initially, I would say, "Wow, you guys (working in the management of these chassis/switches) are very good.".  Now I just scoff and say, you're just lazy or just darn scared/chicken.

When I say "scared/chicken", I meant the people I worked with don't know HOW to upgrade the IOS and they're pretty much scared that if they do reboot the chassis, they are unwilling to imagine the repercussion to the event that the chassis won't recover after the reboot.   Like I said, scared/chicken.  Not the "kind" of network engineer I would want to work with.