IP Core Preventive Maintenance
Introduction
Nowadays network availability and reliability are the most important for every business. Even downtime of a second can cause profit loss and a big impact on a company.
What Is Preventive Maintenance?
Preventive maintenance means taking the required precautions and steps to avoid accidents or equipment failures from occurring before they happen.
It assures mitigating risks in advance by taking proactive measures and proper cleaning
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The requirement of Preventive maintenance
To ensure good heat dissipation and ventilation for the system and to prevent the accumulation of dust on an air filter, it is needed to clean the air filter regularly.
Steps involved in PM
It is recommended to clean an air filter at least once every three months. If an air filter is placed in a dusty environment, it should be cleaned more frequently.
Dustproof Maintenance of the Device
a. Cleaning Air Filter
Removing Dust from Boards
Removing Dust from Optical Interfaces and Connectors
How to check the periodic cycle for dust cleaning on Huawei device?
A. Dustproof Maintenance of IP Core Routers
1. NE40E-X
An air filter is intended to filter out the dust in the air drawn into the chassis for heat dissipation. On the NE40E-X series, air filters are installed on the air intake frame and the power module panel. They are maintained in the same manner.
The procedure for cleaning an air filter of the router is as follows:
Replace the air filter.
Clean the air filter.
The operations are detailed in the following sections.
The tools required for cleaning an air filter include:
Crosshead screwdriver
Soft brush (vacuum cleaner)
Procedure
Check the location of the air filter to be replaced.
Before removing the old air filter, check its location, for example, the cabinet and chassis where the air filter resides. Then, find the air filter to be replaced in the chassis and attach a label to the panel to identify the air filter and avoid dis-operation.
Wear the ESD-preventive wrist strap and connect the grounding terminal to the ESD jack on the chassis. Or wear the ESD-preventive gloves.
ESD jack on the chassis
3. Remove the air filter from the air intake frame.
o Both the upper part and the lower part of the device are installed with an air intake frame. As shown in figure below, hold the slots in both sides of the air intake frame, press hard inwards, and pull the air intake frame horizontally, and the air intake frame is removed. Then, remove the air filter from the air intake frame.
Removing the air filter from the air intake frame on the NE40E-X16
4. Remove the air filter from the SFU area.
a. The air filter is located on the left in the middle of the device. When removing the air filter, hold the upper handle of the air filter with one hand and pull the air filter out horizontally, as shown in the figure below.
Removing the air filter from the SFU area on the NE40E-X16
5. Clean air filters.
o Dust off air filters.
o Use a cleaner to draw the dust.
6. Install an air filter on the air intake frame.
o a. Place the clean and dry air filter onto the panel of the air intake frame. Place fingers in the holes on both sides of the panel to install the panel back to the original place, as shown in the figure below
Installing the air filter on the air intake frame of the NE40E-X16
7. Install an air filter in the SFU area.
o Support the bottom of the air filter with one hand and hold the handle on the air filter with the other hand. Then, insert the clean and dry air filter in the chassis horizontally, as shown in figure below:-
Installing the air filter in the SFU area on the NE40E-X16
2. Maintaining the Air Filter of IP Core Switch
Procedure
Remove an air filter from the air intake frame.
o The air filter is located at the rear of the device. Loosen the captive screws on the panel, as shown in 1 of the figure.
o Hold the panel of the air filter and slowly pull out the air filter until it leaves the chassis, as shown in 2 of the figure.
Removing an air filter from the air intake frame of the NE40E-X3
2. Clean air filters.
o Dust off air filters.
o Use a cleaner to draw the dust.
3. Install a cleaned air filter to the air intake frame.
o Horizontally insert the air filter into the chassis, as shown in figure
o Tighten the captive screws on the panel of the air filter, as shown in the figure.
Installing an air filter to the air intake frame of the NE40E-X3
B. Removing Dust from Boards
Warning
Use antistatic measures in the whole process. For example, you have to operate at an antistatic table and wear antistatic clothes and wrist straps.
Choose the qualified detergent; otherwise, the board will be damaged.
Key Point Note:
Removing boards may significantly affect the running of services. Therefore, you should remove dust from boards during a period when the service traffic is light, for example, between 2:00 and 4:00 a.m.
During the running of a device, dust accumulates on the boards due to cross ventilation in the process of heat dissipation. The lower the air cleanliness and relative humidity are, the higher the accumulation of dust is. The worse the air cleanness is and the lower the relative humidity is, the more dust is absorbed. When a certain amount of dust is accumulated, it affects the heat dissipation and the electric insulation of boards. It thus threatens the stable running of the device.
Recommendation:
You are recommended to clean dust for all boards once in every two years.
Procedure
The steps are described as follows.
Prepare spare boards.
o To clean dust for all boards, you need to prepare a spare board for each board.
Replace boards.
o Replace a board with the spare board first. You cannot remove dust from the board until the spare one is in position and runs normally.
Remove dust.
o You can carry out dust cleaning in many ways. Two ways for dust cleaning are as follows.
With vacuum cleaner
o Brush the dust from the board surface with a clean and dry antistatic soft brush and align the dust intake of a vacuum cleaner with the brush. In this case, dust is absorbed immediately when it is brushed off.
o This method features simple operation and low cost. It is hard to remove the dust that is absorbed on the board surface such as harmful gas.
With detergent
o Use dedicated anhydrous, erosion-free, non-conductive, and highly volatile detergent such as Isopropyl Alcohol (IPA) to remove dust from boards.
o This method helps to remove dust completely, even those harmful gases that are adsorbed on the board surface. It, however, features complicated operations and high costs.
Reuse boards.
o Due to the amount limit of spare boards, it is not possible to replace all the boards with spare boards simultaneously.
You can repeatedly use the cleaned board to replace other boards the types of which are the same for secure maintenance.
C. Removing Dust from Optical Interfaces and Connectors
After a device has run for a period of time, you need to remove dust from optical interfaces on boards and connectors of fibers.
Make sure that services are not interrupted when removing an LPU for dust removal.
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Protection against Laser
o The optical interface emits laser, which may cause injuries to eyes.
o Do not use unqualified cleaning tools or materials. This may damage the optical connectors and interfaces.
o When performing an operation on optical connectors, wearing infrared filter glasses is recommended so that your eyes can be protected from being hurt. If you do not wear such glasses, do not look directly into the optical connector of an optical interface.
Capping Optical Interfaces and Connectors
o Cover the unused optical interfaces on boards and connectors of fibers with dust caps. After you remove the fiber from an optical interface, cover dust caps on the interface and the connector of the fiber.
This helps to:
o Protect eyes from being hurt by laser.
o Prevent dust from being accumulated on optical interfaces and connectors.
Do as follows to clean optical interfaces and connectors:
Procedure
Pull out an LPU.
o Before pulling out an LPU, remove fibers from optical interfaces.
o Performing this step under the guidance of Huawei engineers is recommended so that damages to the LPU can be avoided.
Clean the optical interfaces and connectors with dedicated tools and materials.
o The tools and materials can be purchased from fiber suppliers.
o For large-power optical interfaces and connectors, you must use special tools and materials to clean them.
o For small-power optical interfaces and connectors, you can use clean, dry antistatic brushes, if dedicated tools and materials are unavailable.
Loopback Test on Optical Interfaces
Add an optical attenuator when conducting a loopback test on an optical interface. In this manner, the optical module can be protected from being overloaded and damaged due to high optical power that is received.
D. How to check the periodic cycle for dust cleaning is complete or not?
Please run the command on Huawei devices as shown below:
<Huawei>display dustproof <Huawei>display alarm all
This is showing the alarm existence date and time, so after cleaning filters run the following command to get the alarm clear as well as reset the dustproof net cycle of 3 months (also mentioned in alarm)
<Huawei>reset dustproof run-time
