H3C S5500 Stacking problem

[Mark Pitcher]

I am trying to stack 2xS5500 switches (JD370A & JD369A) and am struggling to communicate with the switches once they are stacked.

They are linked A1- >  B2 & B1 -> A2.

Switch1 as follows:

version 5.20, Release 2202P19
 #
 stack ip-pool 192.168.250.0 255.255.255.0
 stack role master
 stack stack-port 1 port Ten-GigabitEthernet1/1/1
 stack stack-port 1 port Ten-GigabitEthernet1/1/2
#

vlan 1

interface vlan 1

 ip address 192.168.200.102 255.255.255.0

Swittch 2 **************************

version 5.20, Release 2202P19
#
 stack stack-port 1 port Ten-GigabitEthernet1/1/1
 stack stack-port 1 port Ten-GigabitEthernet1/1/2
#

From switch 1 I can see the stack has formed

stack_0.H3C]display stack members
 Number     : 0
 Role       : Master
 Sysname    : stack_0.H3C
 Device Type: H3C S5500-52C-SI
 MAC address: 3ce5-a6f8-XXXX

 Number     : 1
 Role       : Slave
 Sysname    : stack_1.H3C
 Device Type: H3C S5500-28C-SI
 MAC address: 3822-d660-XXXX

I cannot get a ping response from 192.168.200.102 or connect via HTTP.

If I create a new VLAN say 50 for example and create an IP address for that vlan, when I connect a client to the that VLAN I get both a ping response and also a connection via HTTP.

Is there a limitation of using VLAN 1 or have i missed something obvious?

This installation is mainly using VLAN 1 and would be a massive undertaking to change that now. 

Any assistance gratefully received.

Thanks

Mark 

[Fred_Mancen_1]

As far as I know about the IRF feature, given a device 1, its IRF port needs to connect with a different port ID on a second device, as follows:

On device 1, IRF port 1 must be connected to IRF port 2 on device 2, and so on.

If you are connecting the device 1's IRF port 1 to the IRF port 1 on the device 2, maybe this is the problem.

So you have to undo the IRF port 1 in the second switch, create an IRF port 2 then connect it to the IRF port 1 on the first switch.

HTH

[Mark Pitcher]

Thanks for you feedback Fred.

The IRF ports are connected correctly as you have indicated, so the problem must be elsewhere.  There are several new switches to be deployed so I attempted to setup a second stack and have found identical issues with the second stack.  Does anyone know if this is a limitation of VLAN 1?

Mark

[pombeii]

Stack is a totally different feature than IRF. Read the configuration guide for the switch.

[pombeii]

Stack enables remotely managing stacked slave member switches from the master switch, by using the stack switch-to member-id command. It does not enable unifying several switches into one network node as IRF does. You configure features for each switch separately. Your software version also provides a cluster management feature. You could compare them to make the best decision for your network. (I don't think IRF is available for release 2202.) To my knowledge, if you configure the stack stack-port stack-port-num port interface-list command multiple times, the one configured the last take effect. As you have two links between the switches, make sure you have configured spanning tree feature or aggregated the two links, but I'm not sure whether stack runs on aggregate intefaces. The master switch communicates with its slave switches in VLAN 1. I haven't seen any VLAN 1 usage restrictions yet. Hope this information helps.

[Mark Pitcher]

Thank you pombeii for you posts.

The stack switch-to command and the IRF commands do not appear to be valid commands, maybe this is a feature of this version of firmware. 

The desired configuration is for the two switches to be united in a stack and able to use VLAN 1.  Is the best way to achieve this a firmware change to enable the use of IRF commands?  If so what version of firmware is recommended?

If not how can the stack be created?

Thanks

Mark 

[Mark Pitcher · Accepted solution]

Thanks to all for suggestions, the problem is now resolved.

The issue appears to have been related to the firmware 2202P19 and bootrom 509.

In order to install the latest firmware 2208, the bootrom also needed to be upgraded to 603.

Once these two upgrades were performed the IRF commands were available from the command line and the IRF configuration was very simple.

Thanks again

Mark