Power Down Recommendations

[Gregory Leeson]

I'm curious if anyone has any recommendations on a full site power down and then powering back up, in particular, the order in which you'd shut devices down and the order you'd bring them back up.

Here's a rough version of the devices included :

2 WAN links

2 Riverbeds

2 Core Switches (4503's)

4 Distros (6509's)

and about 15 Access Switches (also 6509's)

Also, during the powerdown there will be some people from the electric service provider making some changes.  Would you recommend the devices be completely unplugged to avoid a surge when the power comes back on, or would it suffice to just crank the power switch over to the off position?  It seems to me that it would be safest to unplug them completely.

Also, I'm figuring on starting with the access switches and working my way up the list to power down, then going in the reverse order to power back up (start with the WAN routers.)

Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.  If anyone can point me to a best-practices document I'd be very grateful.

Thanks,

Greg

[Reza Sharifi · Accepted solution]

Greg,

There isn't really any best practice or graceful shutdown when it comes to most Cisco devices. You can start from WAN or LAN side.

Most smaller access switches don't even have a switch to power up or down.  So it means you would need to unplug the power cords from the switches.  For other chassis based switches with power switch, I usually turn off the switch using the power switch and than unplug the cord.  BTW, I think it is good idea to unplug the cords completely specially if you are not using PDUs for you devices.

Also, make a good backup of all your configs before shutting down the devices, just in case.

HTH