[c-nsp] VIP with no PAs

[John Neiberger]

>>> Pete Templin <petelists at templin.org> 4/10/06 8:05:16 AM >>>
>John Neiberger wrote:
>> I'm having yet another recurrence of strange VIP problems in our
7513.
>> This VIP seems to fail every 3-6 months with cache memory parity
errors.
>> This time it only last two months before it started crashing.
Anyway, I
>> opened up another case with TAC and the engineer suggested that I
pull
>> the VIP, remove the port adapters, and reinsert the VIP and then
monitor
>> it for a while. I've always been under the impression that you
weren't
>> supposed to insert a VIP that had no PAs installed.
>
>Me too.  I would plan for a crash.

That's what I was afraid of. I just read a note about this on CCO and
it just says not to do it because it's unsupported. I guess it doesn't
say not to do it because it will break something, but I still worry.

>> I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt but this still worries me a
>> bit. Does that sound like good or bad advice?
>> 
>> [As a side note, after analyzing the crash files, he really has no
idea
>> what's causing the thing to crash. He also wants me to replace our
RSP
>> to see if that stabilizes the VIP, so I'll be coming in again in the
wee
>> hours tomorrow morning to take care of that.]
>
>What model VIP, with what PAs?  What other VIPs/PAs are in the box? 
>What RSP, what IOS?

This is a VIP2-40 with two PA-T3+  in it. Also in the router are an
RSP4 running 12.2(32) Enterprise IPSEC 3DES, another VIP2-40 with an
8-port ATM IMA card, and a couple of other fairly old ethernet cards. At
this point, none of the others are showing any signs of problems. In the
past, however, problems on this VIP have often signalled that problems
were about to spread, usually to the RSP.

This VIP was just replaced two months ago, and it was replaced three
months before that. The crash logs always indicate a memory failure on
the VIP. If that's the case then we've been incredibly unlucky with
memory. There must be something else going wrong but we don't know what
it is. :-(

Thanks,
John
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