Is it mandatory to have Power Stack in Stack swithces

[blnprasad]

Hi,

We have 5 switch in a stack (4x are WS-C3750X-48T-S and 1x WS-C3750X-48P-S) to make as a logical volume. Each switch has two Power Supplies.

For this setup is it mandatory to have Stack Power between switches. I believe stack power is for pooling the power between switches and very useful when one switch fails both the power supplies.

But i guess, stack power is not mandatory to create normal stack for data back plane throughput.

Can I just create Stack with 5x switches for data back plane with two normal power supplies without using Stack power?

Kindly advice

Thanks

[Philip D'Ath]

Stack power is not mandatory.  You can just stack the switches.

[Prabath Godevithanage]

It is not mandatory we've got our labs going without stack-power 

The thing that you'd  have to consider is, if you lose one psu on your poe switch,your secondary psu should be able to power up all your poe ports required(if you use poe).depending on you PSU(wattage) sometimes you may not have enough power to power all  POE port from a single PSU

take a look at the power calculator here if you haven't come across 

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[Joseph W. Doherty]

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Posting

As the other posters have already noted, StackPower is optional (I can also confirm we have production 3750X stacks that don't use it [actually, not even sure we have any StackPower configurations]).

I believe stack power is for pooling the power between switches and very useful when one switch fails both the power supplies.

Yes and no.

StackPower does pool and share power between stack members (up to 4) but there are amperage limits on the power cables.  Especially something like a PoE switch, that loses all its on-board power supplies, likely cannot draw enough power, to fully power itself, even though the other stack member power supplies have sufficient power.

To properly use StackPower, you need to account for amperage needs across the power cables.  Because of the cable amperage limits, you can rarely run a StackPower stack with just a pair of high wattage power supplies in a single stack member.