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My company has a Sonicwall Pro 3060 Enhanced that has been in service 24/7 for about 10 years since it was originally purchased.

Lately the box has seemed to have hiccups in passing traffic (although I don't have any proof it was the router/firewall at fault and don't know how to get proof). This past weekend during a firmware upgrade the box refused to load it's safe-mode interface (possibly corrupted ROM?)

Day-to-day operation seems fine, and nothing in the regular admin interface has issues as far as I can tell. I'm worried that the box is on the fritz and may go out soon.

How does one go about testing a firewall/router (I guess specifically Sonicwall) for signs of failure? I know it's served a long life, and would be reasonable to say it's on the last leg, but I'd like some proof if I can get it.

SnakeDoc
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1 Answers1

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The proper way of doing this is to contact the vendor, typically via a support ticket. I don't know if Dell/SW offers tech support if you're not paying maintenance, but it's worth finding out.

An x86 server has a fairly standard hardware architecture so that you can run the vendor's diagnostics, or your own that you download, for testing RAM, faulty CPU, etc. Something like a Sonicwall is fairly proprietary, so without vendor support, you're not really going to be able to test it yourself to your own satisfaction.

mfinni
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  • Since we're out of maintenance contract, and this product is EOS'ed -- I guess follow-up question would be then is 10 years of lifetime reasonable for an appliance firewall/router like this? Or should it last longer/shorter? On the edge of just pulling the trigger and getting something new (not sonicwall). – SnakeDoc Sep 29 '14 at 22:58
  • 10 years is pretty damned good. – mfinni Sep 29 '14 at 23:01