Switch stack offline

[roadstone]

Hi all,

Forgive me for the newbie question. We're fairly new to the Meraki kit so was just wondering if this is normal or if anyone has suggestions.

We have a stack comprising of MS390-48 & MS390-48UX switches. Over the weekend, with no infrastructure changes taking place, the stack has suddenly stopped communicating with Meraki cloud. All other switches on the network are showing online. The stack itself is functioning, so the network is running as per normal with out error and all the stacking cables are firmly connected etc.

Looking back at the event logs there is nothing to suggest any errors or critical events on the switches before they disappeared offline. That said, if I try and ping the management IP of the stack from a local, there is no response (where as with the other switches, I can see connectivity). There is nothing to suggest changes to the management VLAN either?

Short of pulling power and restarting the whole stack (not ideal as this is a production network), is there much that can be done from the local switches to try get them connecting to the management portal again? I must admit that I am missing the ability to plug in a roll over cable to troubleshoot switch stack issues.

Any thoughts or feedback appreciated.

Kind regards,

Rusty

[MerakiGnome]

Hi @roadstone , what firmware version are you running?

There's a known issue with MS 15.6:

Known issues

• MS390 management plane may restart which will show as an outage on the connectivity bar in dashboard. This does not impact data plane traffic but can cause disruptions to RADIUS authentication (present since MS 14)

[roadstone]

Just for clarity sake - we are running FW 14.32, so that would match what you mention below (present since 14.28)

[MerakiGnome]

Hi @roadstone - yep its there in the 14.32 release notes:

Known issues

• MS390s may experience control plane resets which could impact dashboard connectivity. This does not affect data plane traffic.

i concur with @Karsten Iwen, The MS390's will unfortunately not be on our radar for future customer deployments until the list of bugs is drastically reduced.

Hope your weekend goes smoothly.

[MerakiGnome]

Also this one:

• In rare circumstances, MS390 series switches may disconnect from dashboard until rebooted. Data plane traffic is not impacted unless RADIUS authentication is used (present since MS 14.28)

[MerakiGnome · Accepted solution]

i think you're looking at a stack reboot.

[roadstone]

Hi @DarrenOC . Thanks for the prompt response. I was thinking that this may be the case, but was really hoping for something different. Guess I have my weekend planned now! 😔

[roadstone]

Just adding to my original post. The status LEDs on the member switches are just cycling from Green -> Orange -> White....

[MerakiGnome]

also this one:

• MS390 management plane may experience brief outages which will show as red lines on the connectivity bar in dashboard. These events do not affect control or data plane traffic.

[Karsten Iwen]

I would say this is expected behaviour for the MS390. The list of bugs is larger than the list of features.

Most admins working with Meraki would suggest not to buy 390s, but instead one of the other devices like MS250s or MS35x. But now that you already have these deices, I would open a case every time you are facing a problem.

And look at the release-notes (you find them in the firmware-upgrade page of the dashboard) to see if the behaviour is already mentioned there.

[roadstone]

@Karsten Iwen - Thanks. I'll log a ticket to make a point. I must admit that the 390's have been nothing but problematic since we had them installed (to the point I've seriously question the value of our Meraki investment, and would rip it all out had it not been such a big investment).

I'd like to think that folk at Meraki would appreciate that rebooting a stack is more than a minor inconvenience. But given this bug has been around for such a long time makes me question this.