C9300X-24Y-M - Virtual Stack Option

[MCAL]

Hi all,

We are receiving new shipment of equipment for hardware refresh and the client decided to go with Meraki. Well sort of.

We do not yet have this covered under support so I decided to ask here.

Part of the order are two C9300X-24Y-M series switches. The usual c9300 do not support virtual stacking.

However, this model has it mentioned in its datasheet.

https://documentation.meraki.com/MS/MS_Overview_and_Specifications/Catalyst_9300-M_datasheet

• Virtual stacking supports thousands of switch ports in a single logical stack for unified management, monitoring, and configuration

So my question is anyone here can confirm it is possible to use it. As it would be beneficial for our customer to have it setup in virtual stack ? Thank you in advance.

[GreenMan]

What makes you say that the usual c9300 doesn't support Virtual Stacking?    I wonder if you may be mixing up the product with its mode in the Meraki Dashboard..?

If you have fully managed C9300 switches in your Dashboard, regardless of the model (9300 / 9300L / 9300X) they all support Virtual Stacking;    you see all ports in a given Network in one page and can configure combinations of those ports in one go.

If you have C9300 switches where you are managing the configuration using more traditional methods (most likely, SSH) and just monitoring them in the Dashboard, then Virtual Stacking isn't applicable.

[rwiesmann]

Additionally the stacking documentation:

https://documentation.meraki.com/MS/Stacking/Switch_Stacks

[MCAL]

I am maybe mixing up terminology.

I have been discussing this with a client architect and my senior colleagues so here is a bit of background.
The client is going to separate current core switches in physical stack to two separate server rooms on different floors. They have to lead multiple new fiber connections from outside and inside the building. However, I have not seen fiber cables between the two core switches. They will have redundant connections to meraki firewalls and access switches will have redundant connections, but not between each other. As according to architect it is not possible as the platform does not support what we could call VSS only 9500 do that. In traditional mode anyway and that's what I have been told. But when it comes to fully meraki dashboard managed mode I am not so sure what are the options.

I need to review my stacking knowledge it has been some time and platforms have change so apologies for that. But, what we would like to achieve is to get rid of spanning tree and such from the core layer. We will probably still opt to have at least ethechannel between the two core switches just in case.

[GreenMan]

So;    currently in Meraki / Cloud mode the only option for full (small) Core resilience is to use physical stacking.   This is dependent on max. 3m cables, so:    same room.

If you absolutely need to separate the two core switches (and can't go to C9500 which supports Stackwise Virtual) then you'd look to configure through 'traditional' methods (e.g. SSH) and configure a first hop redundancy protocol like HSRP - but monitor through the Meraki Dashboard:   https://documentation.meraki.com/Cloud_Monitoring_for_Catalyst    (look at the info for 'Switching customers'

All I would say about using (solely) cross-stack etherchannel for resiliance;  consider what happens if someone introduces an unplanned physical loop.

Note:   you will not be able to use etherchannel to MX(s).    Check out the documentation on warm spare in routed mode:  https://documentation.meraki.com/MX/Deployment_Guides/MX_Warm_Spare_-_High_Availability_Pair#Routed_...