NETGEAR is aware of a growing number of phone and online scams. To learn how to stay safe click here.
Forum Discussion
After Upgrade of M4300-8x8f fans stop Working
After a firmware upgrade of M4300-8x8f from 12.0.2.17 to 12.0.7.12 all fans are not working:
FAN Status
Unit ID
1
2
3
4...
I will agree with others: We must have the fans. I ran into this trap after buying 3 of these switches, and 4 weeks later, upgraded the firmware. Now I am sitting on these switches that are running uncomfortably hot just because someone wants to use them in their home?
We must have a toggle to force the fans back on immediately. I have stopped selling Netgear switches to our customers at this point.
Please let me know if you plan on doing this, and if it can be done this week? Otherwise, we would like to return these for full credit.
Thank you for your message. I hear you. To give you some context, thousands of these switches are used in noise sensitive environments such as broadcast trucks and other Pro AV installs. We had to accomodate with these super cost effective 8X8F model. This is the only one, all other M4300s have fans all the time.
Now I understand you and I want to thank you for staying courteous although you are uncomfortable with the running temperature (which stays within specs).
I can propose you to run another version of the M4300 firmware, before the change. This way, your fans will work all the time in the meantime.
On our side, we are going to turn this fan behavior into a setting accessible from the Web GUi and the CLI. We are receiving good feedback from our AV customer base, but you are providing strong feedback too, and I'm willing to add this to our customer enhancements list.
This won't happen in the week, we first need to assess feasibility and plan for it. I can't commit for an ETA at this stage, but we're going to do our best to make it happen in a reasonable time-frame, I hope within a quarter.
Until then, I hope you can download another firmware. Thank you.
Regards,
Now I understand you and I want to thank you for staying courteous although you are uncomfortable with the running temperature (which stays within specs).
I can propose you to run another version of the M4300 firmware, before the change. This way, your fans will work all the time in the meantime.
On our side, we are going to turn this fan behavior into a setting accessible from the Web GUi and the CLI. We are receiving good feedback from our AV customer base, but you are providing strong feedback too, and I'm willing to add this to our customer enhancements list.
This won't happen in the week, we first need to assess feasibility and plan for it. I can't commit for an ETA at this stage, but we're going to do our best to make it happen in a reasonable time-frame, I hope within a quarter.
Until then, I hope you can download another firmware. Thank you.
Regards,
Thanks for your reply.
Knowing that it's being resolved puts me at ease.
You do realize that the NETGEAR Firmware for the NAS that does about the same thing just came back and caused massive failure on a lot of our NAS boxes, right? It is not good to "turn the fans off" or "let it get hot before turning on fans".
We have now had to go back into every NAS and turn the fans back on "MAX" as the update turned them to "smart". We were losing hard drives all over the place before we realized this happened.
IN THEORY what you say is true, it SHOULD be ok, but in a 6 month time frame it is not. It will cause problems by letting it get to higher temperatures. I would estimate that the average lifetime will be cut in half by this "feature". This is suposed to be a DATA CENTER product, and is thousands of dollars. This is not Netgear you purchase at Best Buy.
Please give us an override. It should be an emergency at this point, and also should not take more than 1 hour of coder time. There is no excuse for not putting a slider on the screen that simply turns the fans on.
Losing the last bit of faith I have in Netgear,
National Computer
- Hi GeraldNCC
I can't let you write such certifiably false statements in this thread. Please reconsider. We have assessed the thermal and the MTBF is all possible ways on our M4300-8X8F switch, and we have internal components that rigorously meet their requirements with fans off when ambiant temp is under 25C. A switch is not a NAS, and you are confused I'm afraid. Our MTBF is unchanged at 25C, which you can read in the M4300 datasheet.
That being said, I'm not going to repeat what I've said yesterday, we shall have a setting for fans in the M4300-8X8F soon.
I won't comment on your coder time, please realize this is almost an insulting statement. Maybe you don't know that a switch is not a storage box. M4300 software has millions of lines. Please remain courteous. Regards, I am perfectly aware of the difference in a NAS and a SWITCH. What you are missing is that HEAT is the killer of all electronic items. If kept at the proper temperature, it will last longer.
I've been in this industry for 40+ years, and design circuits. Most of the time, If you put two idential circuits in two different temperatures, the one that is lower will last longer (considering normal temperatures and same humidity).
Why do you think that things fail at a different rate? Most of it is because of temperature and humidity variances. We have controlled servers that have been running 20 years without a problem, and others in uncontrolled (hotter) environments that don't make it to 3 years. We are next to a company, which is in the business of testing components for large companies to figure out MTBF. They stress test everything at different temperatures to give an average MTBF so that the manufacturers can assign warranty lengths for their products. They do this for every batch. The thing that stands out is that properly maintained (lower) temperatures almost always last longer. There is actually a scale they can come up with that will allow them to fail a product in weeks, and be able to tell accurately under "normal" situations when it will fail in real time (by adjusting current, temperature and humidity).
I appreciate that this switch is running "under design temperature", but you are missing the point stated above. If we have it in an abient temperature controlled room of 69 degrees F, and the switch is currently running at 130 F (which it is) and the fans are off, this is where I have a problem.
Would you please spend 1 hour, and make it where we can have fans running again as soon as possible? We cannot keep upgrading/downgrading firmware.
I have one running at
MAC 57
System 69
I don't feel comfortable with these temperatures. It's in an air con room.
I have a M4300-52G-PoE+ in there too, running at
MACA 21
MACB 29
System 30
Hi Netgear Team,
do have a road-map for implementing a fan-switch in the GUI or CLI?
kind regards
NETGEAR Academy
Boost your skills with the Netgear Academy - Get trained, certified and stay ahead with the latest Netgear technology!
Join Us!
