Partner Messaging R7 locked up

[Phoneguy15]

Greeting all,
I have a customer with a Partner Messaging R7 (2 port) that is intermittenly locking up.
Both ports are showing busy and obviously you cannot access Vm in any way.
When I tried to log in through the web browser is gave me a "system busy, please try later" message, and when I tried to go in via RS232 i got a repeating message of "IDE_Controller::reset(): isBusy" message.
When the system is reset it clears up for a while, sometimes overnight, sometimes days, sometimes weeks.

I am really hoping that it is not a hard drive going bad since we replaced their voicemail with this one because the previous one had a bad hard drive.

I have had to replace several voicemail systems lately because of hard drive failures and I am begining to question Avaya's quality control for the voicemail products (Partner Messaging and Merlin Messaging).

Thanks in advance for your responses...

Todd

 

[Dexman]

Sorry to say it, but it sounds like the hard drive is on the way out.

Another way to tell if the hard drive is dying is if it sounds loud when the voicemail module is powering up or when the system is demonstrating the symptoms you mentioned.

The Partner ACS system I maintain is on its 3rd voicemail.

"Refurbished" Partner Mail VS R4.1 (Drive failure 8 months).
New Partner Messaging R6 (Drive issues 12 months + change).
New Partner Messaging R6 (13 months and still going strong).

Some of the vendors/installers that contribute to this board would have better data on how well hard drives are holding out than I do, but the tech help boards I've seen and participate in don't indicate any wide spread problems.

 

[DTGMI]

The main reason the drives are failing are due to cabinet heat - and also the 110V supply is too "hot". The newer Travelstar hard drives that Avaya has used on their PMSG mods are very reliant on a clean 5V power supply. If you are running hot on your 110V - without a UPS - you can figure that the drive will fail much sooner than they should. IBM/Hitachi states that their Travelstar drives shouldn't fail before 3 years if they are left on 24/7.

 

[Dexman]

I'm going under the assumption that the hard drives in the Partner Mail VS and Avaya Partner Messaging spin 24x7. So it would appear that any one of those systems should, in theory, be good for at least 3 years.

 

[DTGMI]

The Hard Drive platter doesn't spin constantly, but the HD circuitry does have to manage power 24/7 and their board components are affected by a "hot" 110V power source.

Many do make it even longer sometimes, but most don't and the problem most times can be helped by a cheap UPS to provide a clean 110V supply to the switch.