I've added switches to an existing stack of S2500s and had both good and very bad experiences with it. I wonder if anyone would share what's considered best practices for doing this.
The issue is that we're taking switches that previously were used in a different switch stack and may have been the primary switch in that stack and wanting that switch to be line card in its new stack. I don't want it to join the stack and try to take over as primary because it's been factory defaulted and has no configuration. I've had the experience of a switch doing just that in a live production environment - it wasn't fun.....
What I've done to prevent the bad experiences I've had in the past is to:
- upgrade the firmware on the switch to the same version as the switches in the stack it will be going to;
- run the 'restore factory-default stacking' command on the switch to try to remove the stacking database that it had;
- set the election priority on the switch to a number below the default (I arbitrarily chose 50).
My concern is that, despite doing these steps, the switch still shows its role as primary - probably because it's a standalone at this point - but it also doesn't allow me to set it to a different role, probably for the same reason.
Is there a sure way of doing this that will result in the desired outcome? I have read the documentation, but it doesn't seem to address this directly.