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Figure 10. Four-Member Stack with Two Uplinks

FlexStack and FlexStack-Plus Comparison with StackWise Plus and StackWise-480

The FlexStack and FlexStack-Plus feature is based on StackWise

Plus. For those network administrators familiar

with managing Cisco Catalyst 3750-E or 3750-X stacks running StackWise Plus, managing FlexStack is very

similar. There are some differences between FlexStack, FlexStack-Plus, and StackWise Plus. This section will

describe the similarities as well as the differences.

Operationally FlexStack is similar to StackWise Plus. The similarities are in the way the switch is managed. There

is a single management point of contact for the stack. All switch configuration is done from the master and applies

globally. The stack appears to have a single forwarding plane for all data traffic. FlexStack supports high-

availability cross-stack features such as EtherChannel, FlexLinks, and Spanning Tree Protocol.

The operational differences are minor and are related more to Cisco IOS Software feature sets on the two different

families of Ethernet switches, rather than on operational aspects of managing switch stacks. The Cisco Catalyst

3750-E, 3750-X, and 3850 Series Switches use licensing to manage feature sets, whereas the Cisco Catalyst

2960-S and 2960-X switches do not have licenses for feature sets. The Cisco Catalyst 3750-E, 3750-X, and 3850

Series Switches support full Layer 3 functionality (for example, Layer 3 forwarding and IP routing), whereas the

2960-S and 2960-X support limited static routing with LAN Base. The 2960-XR supports full routing with the IP-Lite

feature set.

Table 5 shows the differences (in gray) and the similarities (in orange) for FlexStack-Plus and StackWise Plus.

Table 5. Comparing FlexStack-Plus and StackWise Plus

Stack Features

Cisco Catalyst 2960-S

FlexStack Stacking

Cisco Catalyst 2960-X

FlexStack-Plus Stacking

Cisco Catalyst 3750-X

StackWise Plus

Cisco Catalyst 3850

StackWise- 480

Device limit

4 units

8 units

9 units

Stack bandwidth

40Gbps

80Gbps

64Gbps

480Gbps

Architecture

Hardware drop table

Ring (destination stripping)

Ring