Stacking Cisco 3750 switches ‘admin | Sunday, January 15th 2012 | 16 Comments o 4 There are a lot of artides out there on the web for Cisco's 3750 switches. However, there is no promise that those blogs will continue to stay up, so I've decided to create my own blog with my own experiences with Cisco's 3750-£'s and 3750-X switches with many tips along the way! | decided to break up the blog into two parts, Part 1 wil cover stacking configuration, while part 2 covers stack power configuration. hope what you find below is comprehensive enough to get you on your way! Cisco's stacknise technology is pretty cool. Instead of your conventional daisy chaining of switches, you stack the switches from behind using their staclnise cables and software. The benefits are many. Ill ist what Ive found the most important. Stacking Benefits + 326 bandwidth - Cisco likes to advertse 646 of aggregate bandwidth. The keyword is“eggregate”. I find this very misleading because the stackwise cables function bi-drectionally. Tiss where Cisco gets their 64G total speeds. However, when you purchase a 10/100 network card, i's never advertised as 20/200 iit? The truthis, a 100Mbps card at ful duplex technically gets you 200Mbps of avaiable bandwidth. 100Mbps transmit and 100Mbps receive. In any event, all member switches have access to this available bandwidth. ‘+ Management - When stacked, all your member switches are seen as just one switch. From @ management standpoint, ths makes, configuration easy. One management IP address and one configuration fie, Instant access to all your member switches. * Cabling — Cleaner cabing since they stack from behind and would not interfere with any other cables you may have. So itis ‘aesthetically pleasing. ‘+ 9 Member Switch capacity — You can stack up tonne suitches in your stackwise switching fabric. Ths gives you much reom for ‘growth and 432 Ethemet 10/00/1000 ports with 18 10GbE ports. ‘+ Hot pluggable switches — You can remove and add snitches while the stack is running. A working stack can accept new members or delete old ones without service interruption. ‘+ Stackwise Plus ~ Supports local suitching with destination stripping, Ths allows traffic to stay off the stackwise fabricif the destination is already local to the switch, \When playing with equipment, I aways try to understand their behavior. Go over different types of scenarios, ask myself questions. What happens if Ido this? What happens ifT do that? How wil the switch behave? It's not always possible to do this but I always try. Stacking Rules Below list what you should know and understand befare stacking. ‘There are three main software feature sets: LAN Base, IP Base, IP Services «You cannot mix software feature sets. You cannot have some switches with LAN Base and some with IP Services for exemple, '* The Cisco Stackiise technology requires that all units in the stack run the same release of Cisco 10S Software. '* standalone suitch is 2 switch stack with one stack member that also operates as the stack master. ‘¢ Make sure that you power off the switches that you add to or remove from the switch stack. I have not found a dear reason for this, perhaps it’s to prevent any corruption of the stack. Obviously you can add or remove a switch during stack production. ‘© Anew, out-of-the-box switch (one that has not joined a switch stack or has not been manually assigned a stack member number) ships with @ default stack member number of 1. When it joins @ switch stack, its default stack member number changes to the lowest available member number in the stack. ‘+ If you manually change the stack member number, it only takes effect when you reset that specific member switch. ‘© Ahigher priority value for a stack member increases its ikeihood of being elected stack master and retaining its stack member number. ‘The priority value can be 1 to 15. The default priority value is 1. ‘+ You can manually define the priority value for a stack member. I always ike to define which switch is the MASTER. * The configuration that you create on the switch stacks called the provisioned configuration. ‘© The switch that is added to the switch stack and that receives this configuration is called the provisioned switch. 1» Each software image incudes a stack protocol version. In order to remain compatible, protocol versions should be similar. '* Connecting to individual console ports on a member switch stil talks to MASTER switch, Let the stacking begin! ‘Once your first snitch has been turned on (you don’t need to have the stackwise cables plugged in yet), you can define this switch as the MASTER, To do that you need to go into configuration mode: switch(config)# switch 1 priority 15 switch# copy run start switch reload switch 1 indicates your current switch. All switches are switch 1 by defeult. Priority 415is the highest you can set your switch which causes it to become the MASTER. If you want your second switch to become the MASTER you can make it priority 14. If you only have two, then there’s no need to since the only remaining switch will become MASTER by default ifthe original MASTER fails or goes offine.. Assuming you have atleast two 3750's, connect them together in a criss- = For example: reload slot 4 will only reboot the member switch that is switch=-4, remote command show version = You can specify output specifically for a member suitch. If you want the IOS version of member switch2 you would type: remote command 2 show version. Not every command is supported under “remote command”, ‘no stitch provision = If you've removed a member suitch physicaly from your stack, you should run this command to permanently remove it from the stack status when you issue the "show switch” command. archive capy-sw = copies 10S from one switch to another. Configuration mode commands ‘switch priority = Configures the priority for a particular switch. Priorities range from 1 ~ 15. switch 1 renumber 2 = Reconfigures switch 1 as switch 2 and only takes effect after this switch reloads. You can use the "reload slot” ‘command do this so you don'thave to reload the entire stack. But you cannot renumber to an already used snitch, Miscellaneous Notes, Cisco recommends that you leave a blank module if your switch supports modules. If you leave it open, the switch will overheat due to airflow issues. Cisco sells blank modules if you don't have one. Only power on/off switches after you already have the switch stacked. For example, if youre adding a new switch to the stack, don’t have it pomered on while you are connecting the stackwise cables. Connect the cables and then power on the new switch. archive copy-sw command — What does this command really do? It basically issues this command if you wanted to de it manually. copy flash: flashX (where X's your sot number from your member switch) Backup original 10S image - You can backup your original mage before they become part of the stack. Iran into an issue with a corrupted image once and it was a bad experience. Issue a "show flash:” to find the location of your image. Then issue "copy flash: tftp:” to save it to your TFTP server. You can always use MODEM to instal the image if your switch can't boot up. LED lights —Lights on the suitch indicate who is MASTER. Once stacked, there are two types of levels: system-evel and interfaceevel. Each stack has only one configuration fie, whichis distributed to each member in the stack. This allows each switch in the stack to share the same network topology, MAC address, and routing information. In addition, it allows for any member to become the master, ifthe master ever fais. —A break in any one of the cables wil resutin the stack bandwidth being reduce to half of ts full cpacty. Subsecond tming mechanisms tute falover Conclusion hope the information has been informative and that the article was justlong enough but not too long}! If Ihave left anything out that you find citcally important, please let me know! Happy stacking!