SysAdmin Adventures

Another Monday morning, another failed fibre GBIC in an Allied Telesyn switch. Yay(!). And so cheap at £80 apiece to replace. I wouldn’t mind so much if these switches worked well, but they really really don’t.

• Web interface sometimes works, sometimes doesn’t. If it can be arsed to provide the images (because ALL links are image links), it does so at its own discretion and provides no guarantee the right image will be in the right place.
• Switches enjoy failing completely at random intervals prompting a hard-reset.
• Sometimes, when they feel like challenging me, a single port will have a hissy-fit requiring that I reallocate the device plugged into the port, or hard-reset the whole switch.
• Upon reboot, the switch with the VLAN suddenly has a selective memory and forgets to put the VLAN back in place and so the segregated customer network suddenly has full internal network access.
• And, of course, there’s the GBICs, which die on average once every three months or so.

Thanks SO much Allied Telesyn,
No love.