On Thu, 17 Jan 2002 23:21:20 -0500, Laurent Daudelin <nemesys_at_cox.rr.com>
wrote:
>
> on 17/01/02 23:14, Andrew Beals at bandy_at_cinnamon.com wrote:
>
> > On Thu, 17 Jan 2002 21:04:29 -0700, "Grant [Oy Vey] Hutchinson"
> > <grant_at_splorp.com> wrote:
> >> So, is there any reliable way to test these cards in order to check how
> >> far along in their "life cycle" they are?
> >
> > I don't know the answer to your life-cycle question, but typically the only
> > data on a flash card in a routah is the IOS image. Its configuration gets
> > written into on-board NVRAM. It's possible that they may have had core dumps
> > written on them from time to time, but [a] it's really slow and [b] they tend
> > to be bigger than the cards. CSCO's customers don't upgrade router images all
> > that often -- if it works, why mess with it? Additionally, it's quicker for a
> > router in a datacenter to boot off of a server box, and use the image in flash
> > for backup purposes.
>
> How is it that I often read here from various users that cards that have
> been used in Cisco routers are worn out because the routers will constantly
> write on them?
Good question. Routers used internally for development purposes may have
their flash erased and re-written often, but I doubt that customers do that.
The only data that goes on the flash, typically, is the IOS image itself. I
have yet to run across a dead flash card in the lab, and some of my co-workers
do have a bad habit of writing their image on the flash and booting from that
instead of loading it via bootp. Then again, we tend to toss the "obsolete"
stuff pretty quickly, as most of the bug reports come in on the newer
platforms because that's where the new features go in.
andy
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