stacking 6 2960x question

[rbrannon_eci]

Hello,

I have stacked 6, 2960x switches with the supplied 0.5m FlexStack cables, however my "sh switch detail" doesn't match up to how it's cabled. I found documentation on how to cable 4 of them with 0.5m cables, but not 6. 

Could anyone explain or post a diagram of how to achieve this with 0.5m cables? If it's not possible with 0.5m, I can do without the redundancy for a while until I can order a 1.0m cable, I just need to get them in the correct order.

Thanks

[Ahmad Mohaidat]

Hello ,

please check the attached picture that i've just created.

HTH

Ahmad.

[SANTHOSHKUMAR SARAVANAN]

Hi , 

 Maximum limit for flex stack is only 4 units

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/switches/catalyst-2960-series-switches/white_paper_c11-578928.html

Table 2 shows the differences and the similarities for FlexStack and StackWise Plus.

Table 2. Comparing FlexStack and StackWise Plus

	Cisco Catalyst 2960-S Stacking Ease of Use	Cisco Catalyst 3750-X StackWise Plus  Ease of Use and High Availability
Device limit	4 units	9 units
Stack bandwidth	10G/20G	32G/64G
Architecture	Hardware drop table	Ring (destination stripping)
Dynamic ring load balancing	No	Yes
Stack convergence	1-2 seconds	Few milliseconds
Stack quality of service (QoS)	Applied hop by hop	Applied on ingress
Management	Single IP address, SNMP, syslog	Single IP address, SNMP, syslog
Configuration	Single config and CLI, auto image and config update	Single config and CLI, auto image and config update
Show and debug commands	Unified	Unified
Single forwarding and control plane	Synchronize Address Resolution Protocol (ARP), MAC address, Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP), VLAN tables	Synchronize Address Resolution Protocol (ARP), MAC address, Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP), VLAN tables, routing tables
Cross-stack features	Yes	Yes
Single bridge-ID	Yes	Yes
Redundancy	Stack master 1:N redundancy	Stack master 1:N redundancy

Restrictions for Switch Stacks
The following are restrictions for your switch stack configuration:
• Stacking is not supported on switches running the LAN Lite image. All switches in the stack must be
running the LAN Base image.
• In a mixed stack of Catalyst 2960-X and Catalyst 2960-S switches, the number of supported stack
members is reduced from eight to four.
• In a mixed stack of Catalyst 2960-X and Catalyst 2960-Sswitches, full stack bandwidth is reduced from
80 Gbps to 40 Gbps.
• In a mixed stack of Catalyst 2960-X and Catalyst 2960-S switches, stack convergence time is increased
from milliseconds to 1 to 2 seconds.

HTH

Sandy

[nspasov]

The length of the stacking cables should not matter as long as you can connect the top switch with the bottom one. This can of course be hard if you have any rack unit spaces between each switch in a 6 switch stack. For proper connectivity please take a look at the hardware installation guide for the 2960x switches:

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/switches/lan/catalyst2960xr/hardware/installation/guide/b_c2960xr_hig/b_c2960xr_hig_chapter_010.html

Hope this helps!

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