e3500yl Stacking

[Andrew_Schulz]

I've setup two e3500yl switches one as the Commander and one Member/Candidate. It looks like the stack setup is correct however, I assumed that if they were stacked that I would see them as one large 96 port switch versus two 48 port switches and that the config would be applied to both switches or appear as one config for both.

What I see is two seperate switches and the member/candidate has no configuration on it at all. Is this how stacking is suppose to work with these switches? Do I need to get stacking modules to get it work the way I need? Is there a setting I'm missing?

Any suggestions or tips would be appriceated.

[Fredrik Lönnman]

Yes what you're seeing is the E3500yl (and most other E-series) take on "stacking". Not a true IRF/StackWise stack but its just for management.

[Andrew_Schulz]

Can the e3500yl do true IRF? If so, what is required?

[Fredrik Lönnman]

No it cant. You can get the DLA (distributed link aggregation) function via the semi new LACP-DT, but thats about it.

[Andrew_Schulz]

Thanks for the reply.

Then my next question would be how to get the member to route via Commander or stack link out to the WAN/LAN?

Or will I need to place a switch inbetween the ProCurves and the WAN?

[Andrew_Schulz]

IRF sounds pretty complex and more expensive. Aren’t there switches where you just connect the backplanes together so they look like 1 switch?

[Fredrik Lönnman]

Im not sure I understand your question about routing through the Commander.

IRF are more complex than procurve stacking, yes, but you get more resilient functions.

"Aren’t there switches where you just connect the backplanes together so they look like 1 switch?" <- thats IRF. If you want that you should look at the A-series A5500 or A5800.

[Andrew_Schulz]

Re: Im not sure I understand your question about routing through the Commander. - Since the stacking question is clear to me now. I see that the second switch in the stack is basically just a second switch that I will need to build and manage a second set of configurations on to get the devices that are on it to route, etc....

What I was originally thinking was if I could create a route to send the traffic from the second switch through the uplink or what HP calls the stack link to the commander and then the commander could handle all the other routing and VLANs. I understand now that, that is not possible. 

I think I was confused as to the definition of "Stack" to me it seems like it's simple a uplink.