ZD1200 Solid Green lights but dead - 3 different instances this week

[tommy_galuszka]

So I am a tech for a system integration company that primarily uses Ruckus in all of our installs.  I have had 3 calls this week about wifi down and each of them was the same result.  ZD1200 appears to have completely died.  All lights are solid green, even on a fresh reboot (never see the red status light at all even while booting).  None of the units respond to ping, ssh, console...nothing.  I found it very odd the first time I saw it since I have never seen this issue in 15 years of servicing, but to see it 3 times now this week has me very concerned.  Not sure what to do next or even what to tell the clients?  Do I have 3 randomly bricked ZD1200s in a week?

[itdept_head_me]

Well how very convenient.....

so Ruckus don't tie up engineer repair logs against serial numbers?

so in that case how do you spot "trends" with component failures?

[dinesh_upadhyay]

Same issue i have recived ..Ruckus suggested for RMA

[eizens_putnins]

For my understanding, Ruckus doesn't  repair Zd1200 -- as nobody repairs any similar  equipment - repair cost is much higher than replacement cost).  I am quit sure faulty units go directly to recycling. Shipping back is just to avoid customers declaring equipment faulty to get additional free part. Of cause, it would be good that Ruckus look on failed equipment to make part reliability reviews.

What was not mentioned in any message -- how old were faulty  ZD1200 units? This may be important to know!

We had recently 2x ZD1200 faulty with similar symptoms, but there was serial console output showing bad flash in both cases.

Both units were 5+ years old, and were replaced under RTF without issues.  5+ years is reasonable time to become concerned about flash reliability. It is, of cause, possible, that latest ZD firmware versions write more on flash, so it fails faster, but in this case one of the failed units was on version 9.9 still.

ZD1200 is a relatively cheap device, and if network is important, you should have 2 of them for management (as licenses are additive, second ZD isn't actually much of additional expense as it adds 5 licenses to system), and than RTF is good enough even when support expired.

Russia is of cause specific case, but as it is same for all vendors there,  it is just means higher costs using ZD1200 contorllers. I would recommend to use Unleashed or vSZ for all installations in Russia, which would avoid any need for RTF or AR for controllers at all.

Hope it helps. 

[itdept_head_me]

Hi,

Well sorry but that is not how it works in the electronics industry.

Any company not running fault analysis on returned electronics is just asking for trouble

ah..... so bad flash..... its  just like telsa

no one should be writing logs to flash memory...... the cycle life can be as low as 500 times...

[chris_borderit]

Just had the same thing. ZD1200 is from 2014~

first power cycle and router restart, it came up and worked. Wifi went down after half hour maybe. Restart would give red light and beep. one more try and it came back again and I was logged in. Was looking around in GUI and it went off line. Some more restarts, red light and beep, wouldn't pull an IP. Now just two green lights with no reset or F/D. Console would give me a character on 9600 on start up, no other response at 9600 or 115200. Dead to the world. 

****IF YOURS DIED, TRY SWITCHING TO UNLEASHED FOR FREE. It may support your needs and merely needs you to flash you APs to Unleashed firmware, free from Ruckus site. The controller sits on one AP and seems to have a redundant controller option! It is then a cloud only or maybe local interface to manage. No cost and merely some time to flash firmware, may require hard reset. I'm just going to do this now on a 12 AP site.

If its bad flash causing this, then I would expect a little more life and someone would have been able to fix one, or confirm this. Ruckus should step up and offer a repair program or replacement CF is it? 

Mine shows no life other than green lights take a second to come on, kind of useless status lights if they both show green on startup. Removing flash and maybe ram should cause an error beep, as it has AMI-Apollo bios, so sounds like dead board, major component or so. Could be fixed if you wanted to go that far as the used ones aren't that cheap, if the components are available.

Hope that helps others that are stuck with no WiFi and no access to replacements. Seems Ruckus is moving this way, as competition, as they only have one old model controller left.