Best practise stacking (5x 48p)

[MarcP]

Hi all,

I´ll need to get some more switches (5x 48p) and need to stack.

What is the best practise on this with Meraki?

- one stack with five switches

- two stacks, two and three switches

I know it can be up to eight, but only have done 2-3 switches in a stack so far.

Only a single stack would mean less SFP+...

Regards

Marc

[KarstenI]

For me, the main concern for the size of the stack is where the switches are places and how you get the cables from the switch. If they go to different racks, I typically use separate stacks. But other than with the Catalyst switches that sometimes have a slow response on the CLI when there are a lot of switches in a stack, I did not face any problems with 6 switches in a Meraki stack.

Also to consider: One stack is one failure-domain if something gets screwed up with the stacking.

[MarcP]

They´ll all in one cabinet, directly under each other.

Yeah, that´s what I was thinking about, too. a single stack is a single point of failure for all.

Having two stacks, it is more likely not all loose their connection if something goes wrong. - depending on the cabling. If the fibre panel/cable to Core is broken, still all are offline, as in this case the cabling to core is not redundant.

[DarrenOC]

All great points to consider but in all honesty...how often have we lost a full stack?

If you have the luxury to run additional fibres back to your core (or they're in place already) then why not have the additional stack.  But obviously more expense involved in purchasing additional sfp's, fibres etc.

[KarstenI]

@DarrenOC  Completely lost stacks? Once/Twice (1*Catalyst and one heavily misbehaving Meraki stack after an upgrade). Even buying original Cisco SFP+ had been a good solution compared to the additional grey hair caused by this ... 😉 But yes, it happens so seldom that it probably should not be the main concern.