CISCO SG300-28 Managed Switch Fails to Boot

[Brandon_Tampa]

We utilize a SG300-28 28-Port Gigabit Managed Switch between the modem and router. I have recently noticed that every 4-5 days the switch will fail to boot, resulting in a flashing LED light. A simple reset is all it takes to come back online, but I am at a loss as to why this occurs in the first place.

I am a newbie when it comes to both CISCO and managed switches, this is our first. I have tried to review the logs in the administration area but these events are either not logging, or being logged someplace where I am not looking.

Can anyone provide suggestions as to what might cause this failure at the 4-5 day interval? Or, if you have any suggestions as how I can utilize the logs to identify the problem, that would be appreciated too.

NOTE: We've had this switch for about 4 months and, as far as I know, this issue is relatively new. I only first noticed it a little over a week ago and have since been checking it daily. I am not willing to conclude this is the cause, but I did recently upgrade the firmware from 1.4.7.6 to 1.4.8.6, I'd say on a pretty close timeline to when I first noticed this.

 

[kanewolf]

Why is it being rebooted so often? That switch should run for months without a boot.

 

[Brandon_Tampa]

Why is it being rebooted so often? That switch should run for months without a boot.

That is what I'd like to find out! Just to be clear, I am not manually rebooting it. When I come into the office in the morning I find the LED light flashing, which I then reset to resolve. But I would love to know why it has this problem every few days.

 

[kanewolf]

I would say you need to connect to the serial port and see if anything gets printed out overnight. Also you need a syslog server to capture logs.

 

[Brandon_Tampa]

I would say you need to connect to the serial port and see if anything gets printed out overnight. Also you need a syslog server to capture logs.

I'm sure this will sound idiotic, but I'm guessing the CISCO logs can't tell me what is happening? I feel like this switch has a zillion settings and reports, I just find it odd that it doesn't log these types of events.

 

[kanewolf]

That is why the serial port also. But with it resetting, you lose all logs. You probably wont get a smoking gun but maybe get a hint.

 

[bill001g]

This being one of cisco small business switches I have little experience with. Most cisco gear has the ability to send log messages to a snmp server and/or a log server. Both of course require you having a machine available to receive these messages. Many times this is only log you get when you get a switch that gets errors and reboots itself. Sometime it will send out a message that give you a clue just before it crashes.

Otherwise as indicated the serial console method works well. Even when things are really broken you generally get some messages on the console just as it crashes. Since the PC connected to the console will continue to work it should have all the messages that went to the console.

If this switch is like the enterprise versions you may have to increase the level of messages that are logged to the console.