Hi,
The main relationship is the software version – our production software is WB.15.12.0015 which all failed switches were running. We just began rolling out WB.16.03.004.
We have a lot of very dusty environment although 3 out of 4 PSU failures occurred in our clean / controlled hub rooms.
- 1 failure occurred in a fairly dusty environment - J9729A switch with a single PoE device (Meraki)
3 out of 4 failures occurred on stack members (1x 2 members stack and 2x 3 members stacks) in clean environnements
- All J9729A devices
- 2 of which were running ~40 PoE devices (Mostly Cisco 7841 phones, a few meraki Aps)
- 1 of which was running ~3 PoE devices (Meraki APs)
In all cases, failures occurred on J9729A devices running WB.15.12.0015.
I checked our inventory and we have exactly 26x J9729A (few others are J9728A (2920-48G) and J9727A (2920-24G-PoE+) )
So narrowing it down to J9729A devices, that’s ~1.33 failures per 26 units per year (We bought our first J9729A switches in ~nov/dev 2014). And that’s not counting the fact that we have been rolling out progressively, which would probably make the failure rate closer or above 2 failures per year per 26 units. The last failure occured on a switch deployed less than 5 months ago.
If all our 48 ports PoE switches were 2920 (we probably have ~30 more to replaces in the next few years), we’re looking at ~4 failures per year.. the fact is that we have mostly small offices, ~45 across Canada and Europe, we can’t just have 40 extra power supplies laying around for the random occasion.
I'll see if we can get more lucky with a newer firmware but I guess that I cannot in good conscience recommand that model anymore. HPE's support did not really care when I last brought it up anyway.