Deployment Guide

Stacking

An Aggregator auto-congures to operate in standalone mode. To use an Aggregator in a stack, you must manually congure it using the

CLI to operate in stacking mode.

Stacking is supported on the FN410S and FN410T Aggregators with ports 9 and 10 as the stack ports. The Aggregator supports both ring

and daisy-chain topology and stacking of the same type. FN 410S and FN 410T Aggregators support two-unit in-chassis stacking and up to

six units stacking across the chassis.

In Stack mode, the lower two external Ethernet ports (ports 9 and 10) operate as stack links. In Programmable MUX (PMUX) mode, you

can congure any of the external Ethernet ports to operate as stack links.

Stacking provides a single point of management for high availability and higher throughput. To congure a stack, you must use the CLI.

NOTE: The terms stack-unit-id, unit-id, stack-unit-number, stack-number, and unit-number mentioned

in this chapter refers to the stack-unit-number.

Supported Modes

Stacking, PMUX

Topics:

• Conguring a Switch Stack

• Verifying a Stack Conguration

• Troubleshooting a Switch Stack

• Upgrading a Switch Stack

• Upgrading a Single Stack Unit

Conguring a Switch Stack

To congure and bring up a switch stack, follow these steps:

1 Connect the ports on the base module of two Aggregators using 10G direct attach or SFP+ bre cables.

2 Congure each Aggregator to operate in stacking mode.

3 Reload each Aggregator, one after the other in quick succession.

Stacking Prerequisites

Before you cable and congure a stack of the Aggregators, review the following prerequisites.

• All Aggregators in the stack must be powered up with the initial or startup conguration before you attach the cables.

• All stacked Aggregators must run the same Dell Networking OS version. To check the version that a switch is running, use the show

version command. To download a Dell Networking OS version, go to http://support.dell.com.

• Stacking is supported only with other Aggregators. A maximum of six Aggregators are supported in a single stack.

• A maximum of four stack groups is supported on a stacked Aggregator.

Stacking 771