Stacking Dell 10/40GbE MXL switches

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Dell MXL 10/40GbE switches have Fiber Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) and Converged Network Adapter (CNA) support. Hence, both Ethernet traffic and storage traffic can travel on the same port after bandwidth segregation.

To stack two Dell MXL 10/40GbE switches we can use the following steps. Before using these steps the fiber storage modules (FC modules) should be removed as they dont allow stacking. It was observed that after creating the stack, if we reinsert FC storage modules the stack is not affected.

The better way might be to setup Virtual Link Trunking (VLT) so that during upgrades only one of the two switches needs to be rebooted. VLT insures that control plane of both VLT Peers is independent.

In any case if stacking is desired use following steps:

1. Remove FC modules if any
2. Run show system brief and verify that there is no stacking at present
3. In config t

   stack-unit provision
   no stack-unit 0 port 33 portmode quad
   no stack-unit 0 port 37 portmode quad
   stack-unit 0 stack-group 0
   stack-unit 0 stack-group 1
   exit #from config t
   write memory
   reload

4. After this fiber modules can be added again

Refer:

• http://www.dell.com/support/manuals/in/en/inbsd1/force10-mxl-blade/mxl_9.8.0.0_config_pub-v1/provisioning-a-stack-unit?guid=guid-68639e33-253f-4a80-af93-0b5e326c6edd&lang=en-us
• http://www.dell.com/support/manuals/in/en/inbsd1/force10-s5000/s5000_9.9.0.0_config_pub-v1/stack-and-cable-requirements?guid=guid-13fb4778-38cf-4819-a24b-a417b8bdb114&lang=en-us
• http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/product-support/product/force10-mxl-blade/manuals

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