Hello all (first time post),
I need to rearrange the FlexStack-Plus cables on the back of my 6 member stack of Catalyst 2960-x switches. I am rearranging to spread the members across our power failure domains so the stack will not split if we lose 1-2 members from a power failure. My concern is best process to do this change without breaking the stack too badly and with the least amount of downtime (I doubt it but is there any way to do this without downtime).
My current plan is as follows, please feel free to give additional advice or let me know where I might go wrong:
1. Power down all members of the stack.
2. Rearrange FlexStack-Plus cables (to spread over failure domains).
3. Power up the switch that I want to be stack master (Sw1).
4. It should be master and member 1-- correct?
5. Then power up sw2, it will join the stack as member two as long as it has an active FlexStack connection directly to sw1 -- correct?
6. Add the other switches one by one, members 1-6.
I will need to reassign priority before powering down because current priority is lowest on sw1 so to make sure if stack drops or splits when it comes up sw1 has the best chance to be re-elected master I should raise its priority.
My main concern is that when I switch the FlexStack cables and bring up the switches the member numbers could be off and then it would break my config, if say gi2/0/1 was now gi3/0/1, it would cause all kinds of grief and noise if it came up as these are live switches in production and will have live devices still plugged into their ports (during off hours so should not impact employees). Should I go into each switch beforehand and hard assign a member number to each member rather than having it select lowest available number? Is that wise?
Second concern and I think it is unfounded but let me know what you think. Currently the master is sw6 (member *6) and it has the highest priority. I can't think of any issue with changing the master of the stack, is there any reason I would not want to change it?
