I posted this in the regular network switches section of the community but have not received even a single view after 16 hours, so I just found this forum and will attempt to get some answers here.
We have just received 8 of these switches, with the intent of using them in 4 new vmware 6.5 stacks that we're building. We'll use a pair of 550xg's in each "datacenter". 4x esxi hosts, each with dual 10Gb nics. Nic0 to sw1, Nic1 to sw2. We'll uplink each 550xg to a 10g "sled" in a separate 3750x that's already part of our environment.
Default IP doesn't work:
First of all, no matter what I do I cannot connect to these switches via the default IP of 192.168.1.254. I've set the nic on my PC to 192.168.1.55 255.255.255.0 and plugged it into the OOB port; can't ping the switch. Moved the cable to a random port; still can't ping the switch. I have to console in and give vlan 1 an ip address before I can http into the switch...and that only by plugging into a switchport, not the OOB port. Very frustrating; I've unboxed 3 switches and gotten the same results, even after a factory reset on each of them. What gives?
Questions about stacking:
1. For testing, I've configured the first 550XG by adding an IP to vlan1, naming the switch, updating the firmware, and setting up ports 22 and 23 as stacking ports. (These aren't plugged into my network; I'm using PuTTY and the 2nd nic in my pc to configure them.) I then spun up the 2nd switch and did the same, using a different IP of course, and I *didn't* update the firmware. Then I linked the two with cat5e cables in ports 22 and 23 of each switch and watched to see what would happen.
So far, the two switches simply keep rebooting in sequence. See the attachments for a copy of what I'm seeing in putty.
550xg-switches-rebooting-in-sequence.txt shows what I'm seeing when plugged into sw2 and it reboots. Sw1.txt is me starting switch 1 by itself; sw2.txt is me starting switch 2 by itself. fatal.txt is what happened when I shut off both switches, started up sw1, let it boot, then started sw2.
What's up with that?
2. *Must* I use 2 ports for stacking? Ideally, I want to use int te1/0/24 and an sfp+ to uplink to the 3750x, and use int te1/0/13 and a single SFP-H10GB-CU1M stacking cable to stack the switches. But in Stack Management, I have to choose 2 ports for stacking.
a. First, why 2 ports?
b. Second, if I *must* use 2 ports, can I use ports 12 (cat6 cable) and 13 (stacking cable)? Or does stacking have to use the same type of cable?
3. Does stacking combine CPU and RAM of both switches?
Questions about sfp+:
1. The documentation is pretty sketchy, but I *think* that the only short-haul sfp+ module I can use in the 550xg's is the SFP-10G-SR. Is that correct?
2. To use an sfp+ to uplink to our 3750x, will I need to use the same model sfp+ in both switches?
Thanks for the help; and my apologies for this wall of text.
