BOS6250-P48: one switch freezes after powering-up the other

[jdsm]

Hi everyone,

Recently we have acquired several Alcatel-Lucent OmniSwitch 6250 BOS6250-P48 switches.
And now we configuring and installing them, but I have noticed a stability problems related to electrical power.
When we have one switch OS6250-P24 up and running and plug-in the other one's power cord, the first one freezes. The ethernet ports LEDs stop blinking and stay always on. An after a while the hardware watchdog detects the firmware freeze, dumps a stack trace and reboots the switch.

The problem occurs with and without HDMI-type stacking cables connected.

Anyone else had this problem?

Our firmware is OS6.6.3.372.R01GA
Our miniboot is 6.6.3.259.R01

This is the firmware versions that came out of the box.

We have already unpacked 2 bundles BOS6250-P48 and both have problem. We even have tried in different environments and electrical circuits to test for grounding problems, but we had no luck.

Anyone else has this problem?

A third bundle in which one the switches had an extra problem: The flash was corrupted out-of-the-box. I followed the manual instructions to format the Flash and reinstalling all firmware automatically from an USB pendisk. It started working for a while but crashes every few hours.

Is this a batch of switches that are coming with manufacturing problems? Anyone else has these problems?

Best regards,
Jorge Daniel Sequeira Matias
Instituto Superior Técnico / Lisbon
Portugal

[devnull]

I never experienced this problems with about 40 Stacks of 6250.
I would open a ticket.

All switches have the same Firmware/miniboot?
Do they work as standalone? Do they freeze as well, when booted up and you then connect the hdmi cables?

You can try the latest firmware (6.6.3.470), but i'm not sure whether this fixes the problem.
Open a SR and keep us updated.

[silvio]

Hi,
you should update all your switches. With this release I have seen a lot of issues (like reboots with crashdump and corrupted flash). Most issues where seen with 6450 (using the same image-files).
use miniboot: diskinit and/or diskformat
and copy a new image to certified (best way is desaster recovery via usb stick).
regards
Silvio

[jdsm]

Thank you all for your suggestions.

It is also true that on of these switches already came with corrupted flash. We had to reformat it and reinstall firmware with an USB Pendisk.

To add some more info to our firstly described problem, we noticed this firmware was so bad that, when installing 2 switches OS6250-P24 almost 2 meters apart from each other with no cable connecting them, and with 2 different power sources, the first switch already up and running always crashed when pluging in the power cord on the second switch.

The more important information is that this electric compatibility problem only occurs if the power supply is connected to the switch with the provided extension cable.
Mounting the power supply in the back of the switch makes this problem disappear.

Also, upgrading to 6.6.3.470, but still using power extension cable also solved this problem.

Thank all you for your help.

Best Regards,
Jorge Matias