Nsf network design considerations, Why is stacking needed – Dell POWEREDGE M1000E User Manual

Page 146

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Managing a Switch Stack

If you move the master unit of stack to a different place in the network, make

sure you power down the whole stack before you redeploy the master unit so

that the stack members do not continue to use the MAC address of the

redeployed switch.

NSF Network Design Considerations

You can design your network to take maximum advantage of NSF. For

example, by distributing a LAG's member ports across multiple units, the

stack can quickly switch traffic from a port on a failed unit to a port on a

surviving unit. When a unit fails, the forwarding plane of surviving units

removes LAG members on the failed unit so that it only forwards traffic onto

LAG members that remain up. If a LAG is left with no active members, the

LAG goes down. To prevent a LAG from going down, configure LAGs with

members on multiple units within the stack, when possible. If a stack unit

fails, the system can continue to forward on the remaining members of the

stack.
If your switch stack performs VLAN routing, another way to take advantage of

NSF is to configure multiple "best paths" to the same destination on different

stack members. If a unit fails, the forwarding plane removes Equal Cost

Multipath (ECMP) next hops on the failed unit from all unicast forwarding

table entries. If the cleanup leaves a route without any next hops, the route is

deleted. The forwarding plane only selects ECMP next hops on surviving

units. For this reason, try to distribute links providing ECMP paths across

multiple stack units.

Why is Stacking Needed?

Stacking increases port count without requiring additional configuration. If

you have multiple PowerConnect switches, stacking them helps make

management of the switches easier because you configure the stack as a single

unit and do not need to configure individual switches.

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