VLAN BETWEEN STACKS

[GFrazier]

I would like a bit of insight on stacking from anyone with good experience...I wanted to see if anyone had any experience on this and would like to share their view on it and if it would be the best option:

I am currently putting together a network design and was studying the option of stacking.  I want to keep the management simple as possible because this network will be monitored and managed in a different geographical location (in another state).  The environment will rely heavily on bandwidth for a large number of users.  There will be a fiber backbone.

3 floors - 1 switch on the grown floor, 2 switches on the middle floor, and 3 on the main floor with firewall (All Meraki - MS225 switches; MX250 firewall).  I saw that stacking with these model switches are far less expensive than uplinking  each individual switch on the floors with more than one switch.

My concern is VLANing... VLAN trunking between the stacks should not be a problem would it?

[bmehta]

Hello,

Trunking VLANs between the stacks should not be a problem. I would like to know more about how you are setting up L3 interfaces as it is recommended to set them up at the core stack.

[GFrazier]

Hi Bhavya,

To be honest, I am not entirely familiar with the configurations of stacking as far as initial setup. Maybe you can be help me in the planning process and bring me up to speed on what I will need to do with the configurations and also give me a bit of advice on the current design we have come up with so far.

I will give you a rundown on the environment and what equipment we plan to use:

This is a 3 story building. The environment will rely heavily on internet connectivity (streaming, video conferencing, etc.) - these devices will be hardwired to the LAN, while guest devices will rely on wi-fi connectivity (via APs).

The core switch stack will be on the 3rd floor in the MDF room. There will be a 10Gig Fiber Backbone. There will be three MS225 switches attached to a MX250 Firewall. I have researched that it is far less expensive to use a Twinax SFP+ Cable to link the 3rd floor (core) stack to the Firewall (Please let me know if this is a good idea).  

Gnd Floor, 1 switch (One MS225-48LP)
2nd Floor, 2 switches (One MS225-48LP , One MS225-24P)
3rd Floor, 3 switches (Two MS225-48LP , One MS225-24P) core

I plan to use the Stacking cables, of course, between switches on the 2nd and 3rd floor.

The Gnd and 2nd floor switches will be uplinked/trunked via fiber directly to the 3rd floor (core) stack.

If you have any advice for this, I am open to it. You can email me directly at gfrazier@icscanhelp.com