To stack or not to stack

[lgijssel]

A customer of us has requested to upgrade his network and to make it more redundant. He has two 3750 switches that are to be used as core switches. The discussion now focuses on the way in which these switches must be interconnected. They could either be stacked using the stacking cable on the rear or installed as separate L3-switches providing a HSRP solution. There are no physical restrictions that may limit choices here, the question is simply which configuration will provide the best redundancy.

If anyone has an advice or an opinion about which solution is preferrable I would be glad to hear it.

Regards,

Leo

[Adam Frederick]

I personally prefer using the stacking cable. You get more for the buck and minimal configuration. I believe the stack fabric is somewhere between 33-37Gbps, so you can't beat that. You also conserve 1 whole IP address by using the stack cable :)

[atif.awan]

Stacking does make things simpler and gives you the advantage of running Etherchannels across the stack whereby loops are avoided but there is one caveat that you have to consider before you make the decision. I have not seen anyone post a way to upgrade a switch stack with zero downtime. If you deploy them as separate switches you can upgrade them independently as the removal of one switch from the network does not cause an outage as long as you have redundancy designed properly. Maybe someone who has more operational experiance with the 3750 upgrade process (in a stack configuration) can confirm this or maybe mention a better solution.