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Fan Life
Posted: Tue Jun 19, 2018 11:11 pm
by mhoppes
I think we can all agree a switch is a core piece of hardware that we can’t have failing on us. I had a switch recently go out on me on a very hot day because the fan stopped.
This got me thinking - the original switches had two fans in them. The newer smaller switches have one.
How hard would it be to put two fans back in all switches that have fans but run them in a lead/team setup so that both don’t fail at the same time?
Eg - one fan would run for 24 hours, then switch off to the other one? If seizing is a concern (fan stopping after running for a period of time) the non lead fan could idle down.
Re: Fan Life
Posted: Tue Jun 19, 2018 11:25 pm
by sirhc
1) Makes the unit larger people wanted SMALL as possible
2) A second fan control circuit and second fan would add $15 - $20 to MSRP people complain about cost now.
Fan failure rate is less than 0.1%
We sell replacement spare fans for a little above cost on our website.
If you want more fans and size and cost does not matter then buy
WS-12-400-AC has multiple fans.
WS-26-400-AC has multiple fans
WS-26-400-IDC has multiple fans
WS-26-500-DC has multiple fans
Re: Fan Life
Posted: Tue Jun 19, 2018 11:35 pm
by mhoppes
Hot pluggable fan module so you don’t have to take the unit apart to replace the fan?
Re: Fan Life
Posted: Thu Jun 21, 2018 2:17 pm
by petecarlson
My fan failure rate is quite a bit higher then that. Of course we don't report this to you because they are well out of warranty. Could just be me. I really should have done this awhile ago but I just added temperature graphing to catch this before things go tits up so we can replace the fans during a maintenance window.
Re: Fan Life
Posted: Thu Jun 21, 2018 2:38 pm
by mhoppes
Exactly what I’m thinking. These failure are happening after warranty so folks aren’t reporting it.
Re: Fan Life
Posted: Thu Jun 21, 2018 2:54 pm
by sirhc
Well either people are throwing their switches away when a fan fails or buying fans somewhere else which I doubt because we are selling less than they can get as we sell replacement fans basically at cost.
To come up with my percentage of failures I looked at how many RMA's were fan replacement and how many replacement fans we sold.
Why do you have to monitor temperature to catch a bad fan as the switch will email you an alert if the fan is failing or failed if you have the email alerts configured properly on the switch Device/COnfiguration TAB?