In late June, the EB-LINK technical support team cooperated with a data center in East China to complete a backbone link cutover drill. The entire process was timed according to the real night window, and the three links of switching, verification and rollback were completed, focusing on checking whether the availability of spare parts and verification standards were unified among the teams.

Walkthroughs timed according to real windows

The drill is arranged within a two-hour window during low business peaks, and each action is recorded in minutes: cutting off old paths, switching to spare cores, retesting light harvesting, and running business use cases. The results showed that the main time-consuming process was not the operation itself, but checking the jumper labels on the side of the patch panel. The two port identifications were inconsistent with the ledger, which took up nearly one-third of the time. This item was directly written into the rectification list and required to be corrected before the next round of inspections.

After switching, measure the margin first and then confirm the service.

The spare fiber core has been idle for a long time. After switching, it must be measured instead of copying historical data. A total of more than ten trunk links were retested in this round. Most of the deviations between the light reception and the baseline were within a few tenths of dB. One of the links with a deviation of nearly 1.5 dB was judged to be a hidden danger on the connector box side. Cleaning and retesting were arranged during the day the next day and retested for confirmation. Uplink port buttonPCI-EX16 100G dual optical port fiber optic network card (Intel E810 chip)Make a two-way check with the switch port to confirm that the negotiated rate has not been degraded to prevent the link from running at half speed without anyone noticing.

The review left three rectifications

• All labels on the side of the distribution frame shall be re-labeled according to the ledger rules and included in the quarterly inspection items.
• The frequency of spare fiber core light test is changed from once a year to once every quarter, and is recorded in the same table.
• The spare parts truck is always equipped with test jumpers and cleaning parts to avoid borrowing in-use jumpers for testing on site.

The drill data has been incorporated into the revised version of the center's operation and maintenance manual, and similar drills are planned to be conducted every six months; if you need on-site support or consultation on spare parts solutions, please call 0755-83179002.