[j-nsp] Failures in HD-only M7i routers

[sthaug at nethelp.no]

>   we´ve been running different M-series boxes including ~20 M7i´s. In 
> the last 12 months, we had an issue with 3 of these M7i´s: they crashed 
> and couldn´t recover "by themselves". These failures happened usually in 
> association to power failures in facilities, and logs also indicate 
> problems when writing to the hard-disk.
> 
> These boxes only have a hard-drive as storage media, so there isn´t a 
> flash memory in the routers.

Running M7i routers with hard disk only is strongly discouraged - and
Juniper should never have been selling them in the first place. We have
flash memory in all our M7i routers.

Running M7i routers with hard disk only is *especially* discouraged
since the first model of hard disk used by Juniper was a "laptop type"
hard disk *not* suitable or 24x7 operation - and prone to failure after
sufficient poweron hours. As far as I know Juniper has recognized this
problem, and all newer M7i routers are sold with a hard disk type which
*is* suitable for 24x7 operation (e.g. Fujitsu MHT2030AR).

Steinar Haug, Nethelp consulting, sthaug at nethelp.no