Cabling Guide - High Availability

[StormTrooper]

Hi all,

I'm looking for a cabling guide or advice to assist me with a setup that I've inherited.

Currently I have:

2 x MS425 (Core) configured as a physical stack (Warm Spare)

5 x MS225-FP configured as a stack using physical stacking cables.

From the MS425 stack there is one uplink to the non-Meraki firewall.

From the stack of 5 switches there is one uplink to one of the MS425's.

Should there not be further redundancy here ?  

- 1 uplink from each core to the firewall

- 1 uplink from each switch in the stack of 5 to both core switches.

As it stands, should the single switches fail that have the single uplinks then it's game over until the cable is physically plugged into an alternate switch right ?

I've looked at the Meraki documentation for a cabling/HA guide but can't find anything that covers this.

Thanks in advance. 

[ww]

use link aggregation between the stacks and between the core and the firewall.  meraki is using the open standard LACP

https://documentation.meraki.com/zGeneral_Administration/Tools_and_Troubleshooting/Link_Aggregation_...

https://documentation.meraki.com/MS/Port_and_VLAN_Configuration/Switch_Ports#Link_Aggregation

[StormTrooper]

Thanks, I had seen these but wondered if this applies if the switches are physically stacked.  The reason I ask is because in the following Meraki documentation : https://documentation.meraki.com/MS/Stacking/Switch_Stacks#Configuring_a_Physical_Switch_Stack

.it states the following under Physical Switch Stack Configuration Steps:

1. Connect one uplink for the entire switch stack. 

[MRCUR]

That note is meant for initial stack configuration. Once you have the stack configured, you can enable LACP link aggregates for the uplink. You should create the aggregate before connecting the second uplink though. 

[typeraj]

I'm in a similar situation - I have 4x MS210s in a stack and I'm trying to figure out how to connect the stack to 2x MX100s in HA. Like @StormTrooper I read the Physical Stacking guide and assumed that you need a single uplink from the stack. However, reading the HA guide, for a fully redundant switch stack it says you need to run a cable from each switch in the stack to each MX. So my question is with 4 switches in the stack, do I need to run a cable from all 4 to both MXs (ie a total of 8 cables between the stack and the MXs)? 

[cmr]

We have an MX HA pair at each site and a stack of physical switches that they connect to.  We cable one MX to one switch and the other MX to one of the other switches.  Therefore if either MX fails you still have a connection to the switch stack.  Equally if the switch connected to the active MX fails, the other MX takes over and as it is linked to a remaining working switch, you still have a connection.  Worst case where you get a partial failure on a switch, as the MXs are connected to the dashboard via the WAN ports, you can force a failover.