Cisco RPS 2300 questions

[Cyberguyen]

I was hoping that some one would have experience with the Cisco RPS 2300 redundant power supply unit.

I have a RPS 2300 and 2 x 1150 watt PSU installed.

There is 2 cisco switches connected.

I was of the impression that I could remove the power to one of the PSU's and then it would fail over?
But one of the switches looses the power when testing.

Is the redundancy only obtained through the switches own PSU combined with the RPS 2300?

 

[vanfawx]

Hey, that is correct, redundancy is via the switches own PSU combined with the RPS. As well, even though the RPS has 6 ports, it can only power 2 devices. And depending on which switches you're using, the only way to switch back to the on-board PSU, is to reboot the switch in question.

 

[Cyberguyen]

Thank you very much for clarifying

I have tested and my switches does not need to be rebooted to switch back to on-board PSU.

But I have seen schematics where multiple switches are driven from one RPS 2300.
The image below shows 1x POE and 5x non-POE switches.

From documentation:
Cisco Redundant Power System 2300 Hardware Installation Guide, January 2007 - Product Overview [Cisco Redundant Power System 2300]

 

[vanfawx]

Yup, I'm aware you can connect 6 devices, but only 2 can be powered.

https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/p...ystem-2300/redundant_power_system_2300_qa.pdf

From the first answer on the first page:

"The Cisco RPS 2300 helps ensure failover from internal power supply failures for one or two of up to six connected switches or routers"

The RPS 2300 doesn't allocate power from a budget, so much as it just redirect one or two of the power supplies to one or two devices, first come, first served.

Hope that helps!

 

[Cyberguyen]

I was hoping Cisco was a little smarter and I could drive 6 switches with the two PSU's taken care of failover


I have 2 x 1150 watt psu and each can only drive ONE of my 50-60 watt switches - this is waste of resources and rackspace.

This means that a failure in the primary power environment will always bring down my switches unless I have RPS2300 and a PSU for every switch.

The only way to mitigate this is to put some of the switches in a second primary power enviroment and have the RPS2300 in the backup power enviroments.

 

[vanfawx]

Yeah, when I implemented one myself I ran into the exact same limitation. I've ended up pulling it out due to its limitations. If possible it's better to just buy switches with redundant power.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.