9200L 48 port stacking recommendations

[bigkeoni64]

Hello Friends

I'm touching base on behalf of a client of mine who has a quantity of two 9200L 48 ports switches. However and unfortanetly did not purchase any stacking modules and no stacking cables.

It seems like there are two possible scenarios and I am wondering if any one has:

A) Keep them as 2 separate switches management plane wise, but daisy chain them to stack the dataplane from the switchports (sounds like it would be a science project)

OR,

B) Just configure switch 1 as if it were the active, and provision switch 2 but do not try to hook it up until the client buys all the stacking modules and cables.

Any suggestions is greatly appreciated.

Thank you...

[M02@rt37 · Accepted solution]

Hello @bigkeoni64,

Since C9200 new switches are only access switch, they can only be done stacking switches. No VSS....

Option B should be the One, waiting for Stack Kits.

[bigkeoni64]

Can I use these as Top of Rack switches as well ?

It will be used as layer 2 switches utilizing port-channels to the 3-node server farm

[Flavio Miranda]

Hi @bigkeoni64 

 Make more sense to me the option A if they need  ports available right now and can not wait until get stack kit.

The way I understood B, seems like one switch would be waiting with no function.

 By daisy channing the switches,  you can have both operational right the way,  the only inconvinience is manage them separately

In both ways when you get the kit and build the stack there will be reload and downtime any way.

[bigkeoni64]

Option A as stand-alone switches and daisy chain them on the switchports could present serious STP complexities since the client will be setting up a 3-node server farm in Active/Active mode.

Option B would at least eliminate that with stacking, but yeas, the drawback is only one switch will be live while we wait on the stacking kits.

[Flavio Miranda]

Of course stack is the best solution. What I said is, while they wait for the kit, if they need ports, they could use daisy chain. If they dont need all the ports, then keep one switch waitin and use only one.

  STP is not complex at all. Just define who will be the root and that´s it. Put the access port in spanning-tree port fast. STP is meant to be invisible unless someone do something wrong.

Another alternative would be put the switch in layer3  if you dont need to have same vlan in both switch.

[bigkeoni64]

I did leave out that the 9200Ls will be uplinked to another stack of 2960Xs. Since the 9200Ls cannot VSS, then there is no way to form a port channel between the 9200L switches and the 2960X stack. Sort of like how Nexus does the vPC. I can appreciate what you are saying, but the single switch will do for now. Thank you