Stacking Cisco Switches.

[s.maxina1]

Hi All.

I Have a question about Cisco Switches Stacking in General. Does Switch Stacking Lead to increase(sum of all stacked switch dram) of total Dram and Processing strenght? I mean, all Switches DRAMs and CPUs will act as a Pool as below example:

Total_Dram=Dram1+Dram2+...

Total_CPU=CPU1+CPU2+...

thanks.

Sina HR.

[balaji.bandi · Accepted solution]

Recently I come across one good document from cisco, it was for small-medium switches. but the concept remains the same.

worth watching :

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/smb/switches/cisco-350x-series-stackable-managed-switches/smb5252-what-is-stacking.html

[Martin L · Accepted solution]

my guess is not; they are not count as cumulative; each sw in stack deals with its out traffic.

[Joseph W. Doherty · Accepted solution]

Yes and no. As noted by MartinLo each switch deals with its own traffic, they can not "share" their DRAM and/or CPU with another switch in the stack. (However, as one switch often is the stack master, it might reduce the CPU and/or memory load for other switch members.)

For example, if you had a two switch stack, and all traffic only used ports on the one switch, the 2nd switch would not contribute anything. Conversely, if you were able to split the traffic (ideally) evenly across the two switches, you would effectively have twice the DRAM and/or CPU to draw upon.

For the most part, from a performance standpoint, the switch stack doesn't provide benefit over independent switches. Logically, though, a stack behaves as one device, which allows using features such as multi-switch Etherchannel. Or, as switch stacks often use some form of "special" stack cables, inter-switch traffic often has a much "better" path then using regular/ordinary ports.

[s.maxina1]

thanks so much.