Best practice for rebooting switches

[jperrin]

Is there a cisco remmendation/best practice on how often switches should be rebooted ? I have some switches in my network that have been up for more than 5 years. Should they be rebooted for performance or some other reasons ?

[Mark Rigby]

If they are running without issue and the IOS is free of any major or minor bugs that would affect network operation they should never have be rebooted.

[sleepyshark]

Cisco is well known for the fact that their products are rock solid and are designed to run 24x7x365. That being said - the iOS software is also designed to keep operational and stable no matter if your switch has been up for 10 months or 10 years.

Unless you're seeing noticeable problems with the equipment/performance there really is no reason to reboot anything.

Thanks,

Sean Brown

www.sleepyshark.com

[Leo Laohoo]

Depends.  I make it a point to reboot access switches twice a year.  I also upgrade the IOS as often as my heart desires.

Core switches reboot once a year.

Our Wireless LAN Controllers and WAP reboot as often as twice a year.

[darren.g]

jperrin wrote:
Is there a cisco remmendation/best practice on how often switches should be rebooted ? I have some switches in my network that have been up for more than 5 years. Should they be rebooted for performance or some other reasons ?

If it 'aint broke, don't fix it.

If you're not noticing any issues with performance or errors which might indicate a memory leak in IOS, then leave 'em alone unless you have a good reason.

Saying that, 5 years uptime without an IOS update is pretty long - if you've got a service contract, I'd look at downloading and installing the latest stable release of IOS for those switches which supports the feature set you need and then install it.

Cheers.

[tony.henry_2]

I personally only reboot if I have to, and only upgrade if there is a feature I'm looking for. 

[Leo Laohoo]

and only upgrade if there is a feature I'm looking for.

We're the opposite.

We upgrade and then we'll get request if we can enable a feature found in the new IOS.  Weird!