By "stacked" I mean should they be hooked up by the backplane? Dell switches, btw.
Just two hosts connected to an iSCSI SAN.
If the purpose is to be completely redundant, and your server is able to cable one physical NIC directly to each switch, and your SAN can connect to both switches, there's no reason for connections between those switches. Stacking switches can provide great options for a lot of cases, but I don't believe it will here.
If the purpose is to be completely redundant, and your server is able to cable one physical NIC directly to each switch, and your SAN can connect to both switches, there's no reason for connections between those switches. Stacking switches can provide great options for a lot of cases, but I don't believe it will here.
We chose to go the other route. While we are not a big dell switch shop we have elected for seperate stacks for redundancy reasons. Before we did so we had at least one case where a DOA switch caused a stack reboot (Cisco 3750's)
While these are different switches still the advantages it gains you is minimal to stack them
As an alternative I would keep them separate and create a ether channel between the two switches that allows separate management and reduces the risk of software/configuration/hardware failure across the both of them
Jered Rassier
*EqualLogic Technical certified professional
*Dell Enterprise Foundations v.2 Certified professional
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Thank you for all the additional info, jayctd.