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

[Anonymous]

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?

[Anonymous]

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...

[itdept_head_me]

They don't want this discussed in public.

all behind the scenes....

it's the flash.

re-flashing re-inits the storage & marks the bad blocks, but it is a fools game.

Eventually like all flash products it will cascade & lead to full failure.