Cisco 3750 Delayed Power On
Last week I un-racked a Cisco 3750 (WS-C3750G-24TS) from our datacenter and brought it over to our office. This device had been running reliably at the datacenter for over a year. When I went to power it back up at the office, the device acted DOA. No lights, no fans, nothing.
I tested the power cord on another 3750 switch to make sure the power was good and it worked fine. So I plugged it back into the dead 3750 and tried re-seating the cord, etc, to no avail. At this point I picked up the phone and called Cisco to get an RMA issued. About half way through my conversation with the call-taker, I looked down on my desk and realized the switch had booted. I continued with the Cisco case as the last thing I needed was an intermittent switch.
I then tried un-plugging the switch and plugging it back in several times, and it would boot every time. Thinking it might be a capacitor charge issue, I un-plugged it while I went to lunch, and then re-connected it when I got back and it took several minutes again to power on. I have since reproduced this a third time, in which it took over five minutes to boot! I actually have it on video just in case I need to prove it to Cisco.
This was such a weird failure mechanism that I figured I should share in the hopes that someone else might find it a useful data point.
-Eric
I’ve seen this happen as well on a few WS-C3750G-24TS.