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PowerConnect 3348 stacking
Hi, just another question about these switches - I thought it was best to start another thread.
We currently only have one of these switches but have plans for at least another in the near future.
I'd like to do some kind of trunking across the two switches, and use the stacking module to link the two together, as well as provide single-IP management.
Our PowerEdge 1600SC has two 100MHz PCI-X Gbit Ethernet cards (in addition to the onboard one) that I'd like to connect one each of to each of the two switches, thus providing an element of fault tolerance in the Gbit NICs / cabling
Is this possible, or is the 'stacking' feature limited solely to managing the whole stack as a single unit?
Kind regards,
Gavin.
We currently only have one of these switches but have plans for at least another in the near future.
I'd like to do some kind of trunking across the two switches, and use the stacking module to link the two together, as well as provide single-IP management.
Our PowerEdge 1600SC has two 100MHz PCI-X Gbit Ethernet cards (in addition to the onboard one) that I'd like to connect one each of to each of the two switches, thus providing an element of fault tolerance in the Gbit NICs / cabling
Is this possible, or is the 'stacking' feature limited solely to managing the whole stack as a single unit?
Kind regards,
Gavin.
- Thanks for that, Andrew.
Can you confirm for me the amount of bandwidth that the stacking module provides? If I'm connecting a Gbit of server at either end of the stack, I'm sure you can understand my concern that the cables in use are USB, and that even USB2 runs at only 400Mbit/sec.
I'm hoping that USB connectors + cabling were used just because they were cheap, rather than architecting the 'backbone' of the stack on an inadequate system.
Cheers,
Gavin. Andrew_Hicks1
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Posted February 9th, 2004 14:00
The "USB" connectors/cables are just the physical medium - they are not actually USB but a proprietary stacking technology for the PowerConnect 3324/3348 switches.
The bandwidth of the stacking connectors is bi-directional at 2 Gbps.
Message Edited by DELL-AndrewH on 02-09-2004 10:08 AM
Andrew_Hicks1
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Posted February 9th, 2004 12:00
Stacking is intended primarily for management purposes, but features such as link aggregation (we used to call this port trunking, but that terminology was getting confused with VLAN trunking on occaision) can cross between stack members.
You simply configure the respective ports on each switch to do static or dynamic(LACP) link aggregation on the switch side. On the server, you'll probably want to grab the appropriate version of Intel's Proset application for the NICs to create a team, and confirm the team is configured for 802.3ad aggregation (either static or dynamic, depending on how the switch was configured).