Catalyst 4506 with WS-X4548-GB-RJ45V brings whole chassis down

[Erich Schommarz]

We have a customer which has about 40 Catalyst 4506 installed in his user access. 1-2 times a year a line card (WS-X4548-GB-RJ45V) breaks and brings the whole chassis down. This means no power, sup not running and no uplinks active. Everything down. As soon the affected card is pulled out of the chassis, the switch comes back up.

Unfortunately me and my customer are not so happy about the situation. We booth thought, that a failure of a line card should not bring down the whole chassis. This would even happen with two redundant Sup (4507).

My question to the community. Has anybody else issued similar problems? If yes, any tips / solutions / reasons for problem?. Thanks in advance for any input I receive.

Enclosed output of show module and ios verison:

System image file is "bootflash:cat4500-entservicesk9-mz.122-46.SG.bin"

show module
Chassis Type : WS-C4506 

Power consumed by backplane : 0 Watts

Mod Ports Card Type                              Model              Serial No. 
---+-----+--------------------------------------+------------------+-----------
1     2  Supervisor IV 1000BaseX (GBIC)         WS-X4515           JAE0942NLRH 
2    48  10/100/1000BaseT (RJ45)V, Cisco/IEEE   WS-X4548-GB-RJ45V  JAE0944PE1C 
3    48  10/100/1000BaseT (RJ45)V, Cisco/IEEE   WS-X4548-GB-RJ45V  JAE0944PAFE 
4    48  10/100/1000BaseT (RJ45)V, Cisco/IEEE   WS-X4548-GB-RJ45V  JAE1211BADS 
5    48  10/100/1000BaseT (RJ45)V, Cisco/IEEE   WS-X4548-GB-RJ45V  JAE0942NPDH 

M MAC addresses                    Hw  Fw           Sw               Status
--+--------------------------------+---+------------+----------------+---------
1 0015.f9b0.5cc0 to 0015.f9b0.5cc1 4.2 12.2(20r)EW1 12.2(46)SG       Ok
2 0015.f931.c680 to 0015.f931.c6af 3.0                               Ok
3 0015.f931.caa0 to 0015.f931.cacf 3.0                               Ok 
4 001f.6d2f.2df0 to 001f.6d2f.2e1f 4.1                               Ok
5 0015.c6a8.9850 to 0015.c6a8.987f 3.0                               Ok

[IAN WHITMORE]

There are 663 "caveats" i.e. bugs for this version of the IOS. Do you get any crash info you could post? Anything in the logs? I don't fancy looking through all 663

Of course at the end of the day, you might discover it is a bug...and the solution? As always is upgrade the IOS. You should do that anyway.

Regards,

Ian

[Michael Simon]

Hi Erich,

I have some questions.

Has this issue been examined by TAC when one of these cards fail?  At times customers open a case and just insist on an RMA for the failed card.  It is best to allow the TAC to investigate the entire issue.

Is the failure always on the same slot? It is possible there is a backplane issue that results in this unusual condition.

If these failures were always in the same slot on the chassis it is likely there is more going on than a simple card failure.  If multiple cards are failing on this chassis even in multiple slots there is still likely something else causing this rather than simple card failures.  These cards do not have that high a failure rate.

It is not impossible to postulate a failure of a card that disrupts the backplane.  But in my experience in 15 years in the TAC this is a very rare failure condition.  It is very unlikely two cards in many years would have this kind of failure.  I have seen three to the best of my memory.  To think that multiple cards in the same chassis have this kind of failure is almost a guarantee that there is a problem with something else.

Should this happen again open a TAC case to have this investigated.  Be sure to alert the TAC engineer to the history.

........Mike Simon

[Erich Schommarz]

Hi Mike

Thanks for your feedback. Last year, when I had this problem it was a other chassis than this time. The affected card I have tested in two other chassis and the same issue happens.

When the card is installed right from the beginning and I want to power up, nothing happens. I can leave the power supplies on and pull out the card, than it starts, as soon the card is put back, doesn't matter in which state (Power Up, Running and so on) whole chassis goes down.

I think there is not a lot what TAC can do except in analyzing the affected card. It is clear, that it is a HW problem. I will ask back at my 3rd level support that they contact Cisco TAC and ask for the next best steps so maybe Cisco can analyze the card correct.

Thanks for your feedback. If any new news, I will come again with a update.

Erich