Plug In an Ethernet Cable, Take Your Datacenter Offline

New submitter jddj writes: The Next Web reports on a hilarious design failure built into Cisco's 3650 and 3850 Series switches, which TNW terms "A Network Engineer's Worst Nightmare". By plugging in a hooded Ethernet cable, you...well, you'll just have to see the picture and laugh. They write: "The cables, which are sometimes accidentally used in datacenters, feature a protective boot that sticks out over the top to ensure the release tab isn’t accidentally pressed or broken off, rendering the cable useless. That boot would hit the reset button which happened to be positioned directly above port one of the Cisco switch, which causes the device to quietly reset to factory settings."

Comments

Easy way....

[blackfeltfedora]

"There’s an easy way to prevent it happening at all, by disabling the button" Another easy way to prevent this from happening would be DON'T BUY THIS SWITCH

Re:Bad in any case

[Drishmung]

Why didn't they at least recess the switch? You really don't want to accidentally press a reset switch. Poor design.

Not that Cisco hasn't made faux pas before. The 25xx as I recall had socket for a PCMCIA card, but no slot in the front panel to access it! You had to take the case off to do that.