siemens BAS

[freddy-b]

Has anyone out there experienced multiple, simultaneous BAS panel failures and coldstarts with a Siemens Apogeee BAS? It looks like the problem may be caused by problems with the ethernet network connecting the servers and panels.

It sounds like the Real Metasys Man has been there!

[ttstrutt]

I have been at my site with the comm. failures, ran sniffer and had the worst results that field support had seen. It ended up as a TEC that was internally shorting out the FLN. When I tested for continuity to ground, on the active FLN, I was showing intermitent shorts.

I have 3 more FLNs with similar failures, just not as frequent. I ran Sniffer again today on another network and will submit the results to field support in the morning. Hopefully the results will at least let me know if I am dealing with a similar cause of the other failures.

[chesehd]

Not being a wise guy, I just don't want to take anything for granted. What are you calling a network storm? A high volume of ethernet activity? UPS kicking in for a moment during an electrical storm? Multiple routers making/dropping connectivity? Just looking for some clarification on that.

If you are able to deliberately recreate the conditions during the storm and for an extended period of time I would consider running a tracert aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd (letters = IP address of field panel) and see where the breakdown might be happening. It will trace up to 30 "hops" from your terminal to the end device. If you end up bogging down in one spot for most/all the panels that switch/hub may be part of the problem.

You could also try to ping aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd -t

The -t switch will keep in pining the IP address until you hit Ctrl-C vs. 4 hits (standard) and quitting. Win XP can open multiple DOS shells to do both at the same time.

Not as good as a sniffer but it can *possibly* help you narrow down the search a bit.

Not a fix but rather a "Band-Aid," can you accelerate your trend collections? Instead of waiting every 24 hours (or whatever) could you just schedule a trend collection every, say 3 hours? You can always remove the extra collections later but it can help you save that data you're looking for.

[behappy]

1) Do these cabs. plug directly into the ethernet or do you have AEM's.
If you have AEM's then cabs. on the BLN may fail because of problems.

The AEM may have a bad power supply or be bad itself.

2) We just had a cab. that had a module short on/off and caused problems on one network??
Just a thought..

[crnelson]

A "network storm" is is the term used by my IS group to describe a large network outage characterized by high traffic and corrupt data. Usually most other applications shutdown also, such as outlook. I am told it can be caused by a failure of any network card, switch, or router.

Our panels are connected directly to a local network port and then directly to an ethernet hub. What is an AEM?

[dingman]

Ahhh, well then, there's your answer right there. It sounds as if the ethernet is causing the problems and your IT people already know about it. I've worked on many (smaller) ethernets and I don't think I've ever seen a "network storm" shut down applications on PC's~ it must be an event of significant size going on there.

Unfortunately, no equipment is bullet-proof. If you hit it enough times with a big hammer, it will break.

Good Luck. Talk to your IT people.

(Good questions Cheesy-dood)

EDIT: The AEM uses the TCP/IP communications protocol to transfer the BLN information back to the APOGEE Insight. It connects via an Ethernet connection and to the APOGEE field panel via the RS232 modem port.

A "network storm" is is the term used by my IS group to describe a large network outage characterized by high traffic and corrupt data. Usually most other applications shutdown also, such as outlook. I am told it can be caused by a failure of any network card, switch, or router.

Our panels are connected directly to a local network port and then directly to an ethernet hub. What is an AEM?

[behappy]

A "network storm" is is the term used by my IS group to describe a large network outage characterized by high traffic and corrupt data. Usually most other applications shutdown also, such as outlook.

If Outlook is shutting down across the network, the above is correct!
Your IT people need to get the "pipe" fixed.

If Outlook is shutting down on the local machine (workstation), that may be another problem.

Example:
We had the server doing a backup to an external drive @ 0200. No problems, until the local branch got the great idea that we needed to do a "ghost" instead of a backup. This was thru USB to the external drive. All it took was one cab. to have problems (in/out of failure) to lock up the server (not enought resources). Workstations could not talk to the server nobody was happy.

Moral of this story is the IT guys may be right, but don't discount PC problems.

[chesehd]

Back at ya, Dingman. I didn't think of an AEM, I just took it for granted that they were Ethernet panels.

[rob210]

im fairly new tto the hvac filed,im learning some of the siemens apogee,and we just had a BAS failure, had to find a short as the possible cause,the super had to reload the noads,also the It dept had done some work in to the system which gave us a bubnch of issues

[chesehd]

also the It dept had done some work in to the system which gave us a bubnch of issues

If you IT department is not familiar with the ethernet based panels you need to get them up to speed.

I've dealt with several locations that the IT "guru's" decided to relocate a data rack or, even better, completely revamp the IP addressing scheme. We, of course, found out AFTER the cables were cut too short or suddenly whole buildings were "gone."

Make friends with them, buy them a drink, get them up to speed, whatever. It WILL make your life smoother down the road.

[rob210]

weve had siemans come in as they needed to input something ,not sure as ive been doing other things but will find out, as soon as i can, as we still have a whole campus down and showing cab failure,we did reset the panel or should i say tried by shutting power then back in but to no avail,thanks for any answers

[dingman]

Well, good luck Rob. If you have Siemens in there looking at it, the campus should be back up in short order.

If Siemens was just there for another purpose and didn't work on the network failure, then you'll need to "divide and conquer" to find where the communications are failing at.

[kochu]

I would try to use a ethernet datacapture software (like Ethereal witch is free) and see what actual happens. You need FW 2.7 build 1006 to overcome all datastorm issues. If you give me a name in FS I can work from the "inside" and have a look what they have done so far. I am only a couple of feet away in the same building.

Udo