I have recently put three new switches in place. A single 48 port 2960 and two 24 port 2960's. The 48 port is connected to the first 24 port via two ethernet SFP modules. That 24 port switch is then connected to the second 24 port switch via two more ethernet SFP modules. When I view the community in the Cisco Network Assistant I see that one line to each switch appears active and the second does not. When the view the properties of each line one shows a status of "FWD" (can't remember what that stands for but I basically know it means it's working) and the second line shows a status of "BLK" which I know means block. I'm assuming that spanning tree is preventing a loop between these connections.
I want to create an etherchannel between these switches. I'm not very strong at the Cisco command line and switch GUI has very limited configuration. However, in the Cisco Network Assistant I more controll over what I can configured....including etherchannels. I was just about to the pull the trigger on creating an either channel between two of the switches and a coworker of mine (who is much more knowledgable at Cisco) warned me that it may by default complete the configuration but configure the ports as shutdown. He recommended that I do this from the command line so I could issue the "no shut" command as well. I've looked at configuring the eitherchannels from the command line on 2960's and quite frankly it doesn't look to friendly to me. I'm a GUI kind of guy.
So can anyone offer any assistance on configuring this from the GUI for a command line handicapped person? If I pull the trigger will it shut down the ports or is it really as straight forward as it looks? By the way, these are production switches. I really need to try to not take these switches down but it won't be the end of the world if it happens. I am working remotely on them and it's only a 40 minute drive to the switches.
