Cisco SG350XG-24F reboot time

[fred79125]

Hello,

I have a SG350XG-24F, currently running the latest firmware (2.3.5.63)

What would be a normal timing for rebooting the switch ? Mine is currently doing that in 10-12 minutes, which seems awfully slow... (2-3 minutes before losing ping to the OOB and ports, then 7-9 minutes to come back with regular traffic and connect again to OOB a few seconds later)

This switch is still on testing, so it's almost empty, it has only the following connectors in use :
 - 2 SFP+ ports for Twinax cables,
 - 1 SFP+ with a RJ45 adapter
 - 1 RJ45 port

I currently have no complex setup, it's running as a standalone switch (no stack), and it's almost running with the config out of the box (I changed mostly only OOB settings)...

How does those 10-12 minutes sound to you ?
How can I improve that ?

Thank you

[Mark Malone]

You cant improve the boot process , that's about right a cisco catalyst switch can take up to 15 minutes and then you have convergence as well if routing etc and running other features ,
the reboot time shouldn't really be an issue as switch should only be rebooted for upgrades etc every so often , constantly rebooting it will put the switch under pressure as it has to go through the POST startup each time and check its hardware is functioning right , if that's it out of the box that's the way its going to be once the POST is functioning correctly , you can watch the boot process on console

[fred79125]

Thank you for your answer. Of course this switch won't be restarted often, but it's important for me to reduce downtime.

I will try to connect a console port to check the boot process. For the memory / hardware check operations, usually it's really fast when doing a reboot, compared to a cold start.

For what I can remember, when I started the switch brand new a few weeks ago, it was up less than 3 minutes later. I don't know if it's related, but see also my other post here https://supportforums.cisco.com/t5/lan-switching-and-routing/cisco-sg350xg-24f-temporarily-losing-time-during-reboot/td-p/3211936 : this SG350XG does not retain the time when going down, that sounds really strange to me...

[Mark Malone]

Hi well here's something to go on as an example 3850 I just reloaded it as I had to fix a mem issue that's been ongoing , upgraded to a new image took 44 minutes for switch to come back online after soft reload , I'm working on cisco gear nearly 12 yrs now and haven't ever really seen any tweaks to speed up boot time , I have seen a lot of people request it over the years though but in my opinion there actually getting longer on the newer switches not faster

*Nov 7 15:39:49.138 UTC: %SYS-6-BOOTTIME: Time taken to reboot after reload = 2645 seconds

My catalyst switches don't retain NTP time either during bootup they revert to the local clock state the day is 1993 and then revert to NTP when the config is fully loaded

[fred79125]

Ok I went on site to turn the switch off (power cord unplugged), unplugged every cables (only 2x SFP+ Twinax cables, 1x SFP+ RJ45 adapter, and 1x RJ45), then replugged everything, plugged back the power...

And guess what : now it's starting in 95 seconds, which is just 6x times faster.

I don't know if there was something wrong with the cables / adapters or something else, but everything was working perfectly (for network traffic I mean), only the startup time was awfully slow.

I had only short time on site so I could not connect a console cable to see what was going on before... Is there a way to see the older boot log (not only the events logged which can be seen in the www interface)

For the time setting lost during boot time, I'm glad to hear you have the same behavior, but it still sounds really strange. Cisco explains the importance of having good time sync accross all devices, and does not retain the time during restart ? Hmmm ... ok.

[Mark Malone]

For the time setting lost during boot time, I'm glad to hear you have the same behavior, but it still sounds really strange. Cisco explains the importance of having good time sync accross all devices, and does not retain the time during restart ? Hmmm ... ok.

The reason his happens is there is no internal hardware clock to keep the time looking at another post
https://supportforums.cisco.com/t5/other-network-infrastructure/system-time-changes-after-reload/td-p/1575121



I had only short time on site so I could not connect a console cable to see what was going on before... Is there a way to see the older boot log (not only the events logged which can be seen in the www interface)

I have never seen a way to check older boot logs , not that I'm ware there stored anywhere in flash that you could call them up , you could record them yourself through putty though to compare by capturing the console output each time

If you believe there maybe a hardware issue as its SB switch you could raise a case if stil, under support
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/web/tsd-cisco-small-business-support-center-contacts.html