topic RE: Stack advantages in ExtremeSwitching (Other)

Stack advantages

Rachid_DHOU — Tue, 28 Feb 2017 19:26:00 GMT

Dears,

Do you have any presentation/link about benefits of stacking (easy management, Redundancy.....)

Customer is afraid about stacking need to convince him.

PS : We are talking about X480-24x

Kind regards,

Rachid DHOU

RE: Stack advantages

Jeremy_Gibbs — Tue, 28 Feb 2017 19:53:00 GMT

How about this, what are his questions and concerns? I will try to answer them for you, I have run switch stacks for about six years. And I have had very little trouble with them. Imagine having eight separate switches, that need a separate management IP's, that need a separate configurations to be saved and backed up nightly, less redundant by nature in the case of a hardware failure as its easier to lag switch one and seven and get redundancy through the stack, then to have two uplinks per switch, creating more opex.

RE: Stack advantages

Rachid_DHOU — Wed, 01 Mar 2017 17:23:00 GMT

thanks so much Jeremy,

Actually customer has a doubt about redundancy and fail over mechanisms when stacking is enabled and what he will win when he use stacking instead of swapping a switch with great one (modular) or use other small switches but without stacking (LAG instead).

Kind regards,

Rachid DHOU

RE: Stack advantages

Jeremy_Gibbs — Tue, 07 Mar 2017 02:55:00 GMT

Well, there are many reasons for stacking. Simpler management of the stacked device, less configuration, one less device to backup and restore, being able to utilize multiple links across the stack without having needing to support mLAG, easier to upgrade code, easier to find ports in the stack, as all the ports in the sack of the switch number before the port number, i.e. 3:5 is switch 3 port 5 and 5:3 would be switch 5 port 3. Makes mistakes less likely.

What you loose is, the ability to upgrade each switch, one at a time. Possibly minimizing outages or disruptions. I think a much better design for a ToR solution or end of row / middle of row switching... But for IDF's (switch closets for end user connectivity), it's just cheeper, and more efficient. 8 switches in 1 stack count as 1 license in NetSight (Extreme Management), vs 8 license if each of those switches were independent.

RE: Stack advantages

Rachid_DHOU — Wed, 08 Mar 2017 23:49:00 GMT

Thanks so much Jeremy !!

RE: Stack advantages

Drew_C — Thu, 09 Mar 2017 04:38:00 GMT

There's a lot of good discussion in this thread: https://community.extremenetworks.com/extreme/topics/mlag-vs-stack-what-am-i-missing