2960S-24P POE switch issue

[Geister29]

Hello everyone, 

I have a question that is perplexing me.  Yesterday we had what we believe was our first 2960s failure after our refresh of of all our edge switches.  When we got to the switch it was Flashing orange on the left side for status and the console light was on.  I consoled into the switch and was at the post menu.  I typed 'boot' and it tried to boot but i got the error the boot failed.  So we began to Install a new replacement switch and we needed to factory reset it.  I found the command in that process from the Post menu of 'flashinit'.  I tried that on the original/failed switch and it booted up!  Everything came back all systems were restore everything came back up.  We ended up moving everything to the new switch.  But my question is looking for the root cause that would have caused the original 2960s while in production to go to the Post menu, drop all services and not boot.  We do not believe that it was a power issue as nothing else on that UPS lost any power.  My manager is asking for a "root cause".  Any in site will help.  Thank you. 

[Reza Sharifi]

Hi,

Switch reboot in production is usually the result of some sort of software failure. Sometimes it can be hardware, but since the switch is backup and running most likely it is software issue. If you have syslog server setup, you can go back and take a look at the time of the crash and maybe gather some data to help you find the root cause.  You should also open a ticket with TAC and have them check the switch memory, processor, ports, etc.. for any issues.  You also may want to work with Cisco and RMA the switch, as the same thing will most likely happen again.

HTH