Dell N4032 Unassigned

Question

Hi everyone, I have 2 Dell N4032 Switches which have been configured in stack. Recently, I have observed that one of them is in "unassigned" mode, doesn't seems to be connected to the stack anymore. The other seems still in stack, it status shows "Mgmt Sw". The "unassigned" switch is the unit 1, and the other is the Unit 2.

On theses switches, there are servers in production (Xenserver) so there is a risk if I decide to reboot the "unassigned" switche (or perhaps not). I'm not an expert in switches and I don't know how the switches will react in a reboot case. Does the Mgmt switche will reboot also ? There's a lot of uncertainties. I was planning to call the Dell Technical Support, but before I would want some advices from you. In this case, what can I do to address the issue? Simply reboot the "unassigned" switch? I know that I could remove this switche with the "no member" command line, but how the remaining switch will react.... thank you for your help !

DELL-Josh Cr · Answer

Hi, If it is working right now I would wait until you can schedule downtime. Rebooting the unassigned one should allow it to get assigned a stack number.

851d229 · Answer

ok I will try this at next downtime. thank you !

851d229 · Answer

I have another concern. Is there a risk for the other switch that still operates that this switch could have issues ? For exemple, could this active switch reboot or close connection to production servers during the time the other unassigned switch is rebooting? If the unassigned switch reboots and becomes again a stack member, do the stack will close connections to servers ?

In my understanding of the stack concept, the remaining active switch would not cause any problem to the production server. And if we want the other switch which has problem to be part again of the stack, no server would have connectivity problem, it's the concept of redundancy of stack....

vt1012 · Answer

If the stack was already working at some point and one member goes down, then comes back up at a later time, then it should not impact the other member and it's attached devices. There is a detailed guide on stacking the N4000 series here: https://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/04/shared-content~data-sheets~en/documents~stacking_dell_networking_n4000.pdf. One nice feature offered with stacking is the ability to split your teamed NIC ports across multiple stack members. This way if one stack member goes down the other remains active. Hope this helps!

851d229 · Answer

Yes my 2 switches are already configured this way so the remaining switche is still available for the management.  Tonight is the night I will reboot my 'not present' switche.  Hope it will return in it's 'stack' state. Otherwise, I will have to reconfigure it to be again in the stack.

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Dell N4032 Unassigned

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