Wired Intelligent Edge

Is it possible to restrict switches from being added to an exisiting stack?  We had an instance where a cable installer tested a fiber pair and plugged it back in the wrong way and merged our two stacks together.  It took some work to fix things and makes me wonder if I missed a step to "lock down" the switches or is this something that should be a feature request?

Thanks!

Jaker,

I assume your ArubaStacks are using dynamic provisioning as opposed to pre-provisioned? With dynamic, the only way to "lock" a stack down would be to effectively max out all the member IDs. That obviously isn't very practical.

With pre-provisioned, you actually lock the switches based on serial numbers as such, if a switch attaches and it isn't in the stack-profile, it will be stuck in a dormant state and not allowed to join. Here is an example of how you would configure it from dynamic to pre-provisioned.

(ArubaStack) #show stacking members

Stack status: Active, Stack Id: 001a1e17b98050f9e894
Stack uptime: 17 days 2 hours 21 minutes 22 seconds
Id    Role       MAC Address        Priority  State     Model            Serial
--    ----       -----------        --------  -----     -----            ------
0     Secondary  00:1a:1e:17:b9:80  255       Active    ArubaS3500-24F   BW0000044
1  *  Primary    00:0b:86:6c:25:00  255       Active    ArubaS3500-48P   AW0000549
2     Linecard   00:0b:86:6b:7b:c0  128       Active    ArubaS3500-48P   AW0000446

(ArubaStack) #show stacking generated-preset-profile

Preset-config Profile Command
-----------------------------
stack-profile
member-id 0 serial-number BW0000044 role primary-capable
member-id 1 serial-number AW0000549 role primary-capable
member-id 2 serial-number AW0000446 role line-card

(ArubaStack) #configure t
Enter Configuration commands, one per line. End with CNTL/Z

(ArubaStack) (config) #stack-profile

(ArubaStack) (stack-profile) #no member-id 0 election-priority 255
WARNING!! This profile will not be applied till the configuration is saved.

(ArubaStack) (stack-profile) #no member-id 1 election-priority 255
WARNING!! This profile will not be applied till the configuration is saved.

(ArubaStack) (stack-profile) #member-id 0 serial-number BW0000044 role primary-capable
WARNING!! This profile will not be applied till the configuration is saved.

(ArubaStack) (stack-profile) #member-id 1 serial-number AW0000549 role primary-capable
WARNING!! This profile will not be applied till the configuration is saved.

(ArubaStack) (stack-profile) #member-id 2 serial-number AW0000446 role line-card
WARNING!! This profile will not be applied till the configuration is saved.

(ArubaStack) (stack-profile) #exit
(ArubaStack) (config) #exit
(ArubaStack) #write mem
Saving Configuration......


Configuration Saved.

(ArubaStack) #show stacking members

Stack status: Active, Stack Id: 001a1e17b98050f9e894
Stack uptime: 17 days 2 hours 25 minutes 52 seconds
Id    Role       MAC Address        Priority  State     Model            Serial
--    ----       -----------        --------  -----     -----            ------
0     Secondary  00:1a:1e:17:b9:80  Preset    Active    ArubaS3500-24F   BW0000044
1  *  Primary    00:0b:86:6c:25:00  Preset    Active    ArubaS3500-48P   AW0000549
2     Linecard   00:0b:86:6b:7b:c0  Preset    Active    ArubaS3500-48P   AW0000446

Lastly, if you have any standalone switches or stacks that don't have a redundant loop or braid (which I don't recommend), you can also disable the stacking ports.

Best regards,

Madani

Thanks for this information.  

As a side note, if you connect a stack port on switch A to an uplink port on switch B is it by design that switch B will join switch A's stack?  That is what happened to us and caused some issues with the switches in switch B's stack as they tried to join switch A's stack and dumped their config (or so it appered). This situation then left our 9th switch in limbo taking all of the ports down.

Jaker,

Yes, this is an expected behavior and called a Stack Merge. Here is an excerpt from the userguide.

Stack Merge—Dynamic Election
Stack merge takes place when two independently running ArubaStacks (with unique ArubaStack IDs) are connected to each other. Rules to determine which ArubaStack wins the merge are:

• A pre-provisioned ArubaStack wins over a dynamic-election ArubaStack
• An active ArubaStack wins over an inactive ArubaStack
• The ArubaStack with a higher stack priority (priority of the primary) wins
• The ArubaStack with more members wins over an ArubaStack with fewer members
• The ArubaStack with the lower ArubaStack uptime will merge into a higher uptime ArubaStack
• The tie breaker is the Stack ID; the ArubaStack with the lower Stack ID wins

Best regards,

Madani

Thanks, I remember that part now.  Funny how I totally forgot about that section when the problem occured... :(