MS-425 Stack Firmware Upgrades

Solved
jlynn
Comes here often

MS-425 Stack Firmware Upgrades

I utilize 2 MS-425 stacked in conjunction with a Hyper-V Cluster to provide failover clustering. I always seem to have issues with my cluster after upgrading firmware of the network. When upgrading the stack does the entire stack upgrade at the same time or does it upgrade half of the stack then the other? 

 

My thoughts are that the entire stack is upgraded at the same time which causes my cluster to lose connectivity with itself because I only have the cluster attached to this stack. Is there something I'm missing?

1 Accepted Solution
PhilipDAth
Kind of a big deal
Kind of a big deal

>When upgrading the stack does the entire stack upgrade at the same time

 

Correct.  And reboots at the same time.

 

 

I don't work with Hyper-V in particular, but a low cost solution I have used before is to add in a third low cost "heartbeat" switch.  Typically you just use a Gigabit copper port built into the server and plug it into a Gigabit port on the third switch.

Then when the main stack reboots the nodes don't go spastic.

 

Another option is to not stack the switches - but you loose the ability to channel across the switches.  If you are using Hyper-V then this may not be an issue.

 

I guess another expensive option is to use a pair of stacks and dual connect the servers across them.

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1 Reply 1
PhilipDAth
Kind of a big deal
Kind of a big deal

>When upgrading the stack does the entire stack upgrade at the same time

 

Correct.  And reboots at the same time.

 

 

I don't work with Hyper-V in particular, but a low cost solution I have used before is to add in a third low cost "heartbeat" switch.  Typically you just use a Gigabit copper port built into the server and plug it into a Gigabit port on the third switch.

Then when the main stack reboots the nodes don't go spastic.

 

Another option is to not stack the switches - but you loose the ability to channel across the switches.  If you are using Hyper-V then this may not be an issue.

 

I guess another expensive option is to use a pair of stacks and dual connect the servers across them.

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