Stacking Procurve Switch Help

[Steven Chen_1]

Hello,

We have one procurve switch 2524 setup with an IP and plan to stack it with 5 more 2524 switches.

I would like to know if we need one IP for each stacked switches. I hope we don't, but want to have gurus to confirm this action.

Very appreciated.

Steven

[Fotios Kotsiopoulos · Accepted solution]

Hi Steven,

One IP address assigned to the switch that will act as the stack commander is fine.

[Hartmut Petroll]

Steve,
just remember: one IP for the whole stack but what happens if a switch in the middle of the stack fails? Some of the switches will be unmanageble even with a redundant connection. Is it worth having this by saving IP addresses?

Best regards

[Fotios Kotsiopoulos]

If the stack is configured with a redundant STP/RSTP connection to the rest of the network, the only time you won't be able to manage the it ss when the stack commander switch fails.

Member stack switches that don't have IP addresses assigned can fail without affecting management of the stack. However, since the commander switch is still a single point of failure (from a management point of view), you can always assign IP addresses to the member switches as a backup.

Cheers,
Fotios.

[Louis Goeppinger]

Hello Steven,
Another thing to consider is that Toptools Device Manager discovers and manages devices by IP address, so if these other 5 switches do not have IP addresses assigned to them, Toptools will not discover and manage them. They can still be seen through the commander, but things like firmware updates can not be completed via Toptools Device Manager.
Louis

[DCSloane]

Can stacked, 2900-series Procurve switches receive firmware updates through the web UI? If the stack commander is the only one with an IP address, and this is possible, should it get the firmware update first, followed by stack members? Or the other way around?