Stack removal

[PacNWNetTek]

I am my honing my troubleshoot skills and I have a general inquiry on switch stacks. I have a member that went down and I am curious on do and donts of adding it back without restarting the whole stack. I am aware that stacking a live member will cause and stack reboot but what if the member goes down, yet still has power, Is it safe to remove it or should it still be removed from power still? Im curious also if that would even have any positive effect on resolving an issue.

[Joseph W. Doherty · Accepted solution]

Unsure if stackable switches since the 3750 series recommend otherwise, but recall those switches recommended one side of a stacking cable only be connected or disconnected from a powered off member unit.  I.e. one side of stack cable connection can be powered on but other side should be powered off.

As to adding a "replacement" stack member, often it was ideal to use the same exact stack member for replacement following the procedure for preprovisioning.  This allowed the replacement to rejoin the stack using the prior member's port configurations.

You could also add a "new" stack member as a replacement too, but this then generally required you to configure the replacement switch ports.

[Leo Laohoo]

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@PacNWNetTek wrote:

I have a member that went down and I am curious on do and donts of adding it back without restarting the whole stack.

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Always POWER DOWN the new/additional switch before connecting the stacking cable.  IF the new switch is powered up and stacking cable gets connected, the entire stack reboots.  This is not a bug, this is by design.

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@PacNWNetTek wrote:

yet still has power, Is it safe to remove it or should it still be removed from power still?

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If you do not know what you're doing then power down the switch that you want to remove before disconnecting the stacking cables.