About a year ago I put together a stacking calculator for ArubaOS-Switch to help with planning for large deployments with hundreds of switches across multiple stacks and locations: https://community.arubanetworks.com/t5/Wired-Intelligent-Edge-Campus/AOS-Switch-Stacking-Calculator/m-p/524719#M5670
We now have a large portfolio of campus CX switches, so an upgrade to the stacking calculator was required!
For these larger deployments, I would initially always suggest the chassis-based 6400 switches, with support for 960 RJ45 ports including SmartRate/multigig and bt power over a pair of 6410s. However, the stacking switches are very popular, and are often chosen instead. A stacking solution can also provide more total power budget over a chassis too – along with lots of extra power cables.
This spreadsheet has evolved over the course of several large projects, and I imagine it may be useful to others. The column “What will each stack membership look like?” was one of the main features to help visualize exactly what was being proposed.
Using the Spreadsheet
The spreadsheet should be fairly self-explanatory.
- All of the purple fields require input; add or remove as required
- If you need to allow for growth, enter the predicted percentage increase in “Est Growth”
- Some locations will have specific cabling locations and requirements (perhaps dictated by physical placement, distance limitations or HA needs) that define the minimum number of positions where a switch is required. Enter this number in “Min Spread”.
- The red fields require selection from the drop-down list
- Choose the switch type and the corresponding maximum stack size from the two drop-down lists.
- Two new drop-down fields are the uplink speed/type selection, and the number of uplinks per stack
- Note that 50Gb is just a placeholder until 50Gb optics become available
- Uplinks per stack allows the option of choosing either 2 or 4 uplinks (eg 2 x 10Gb or 4 x 10Gb for a 20 or 40Gb aggregate). The spreadsheet modelling supports 4 x 10 or 25Gb uplinks only, 40Gb is modelled with 2 uplinks only.
Summary Data from the Spreadsheet
Uplink counts are based on your chosen speed and type.
- Standalone/single switch will need two uplinks to the core and no requirement for a stacking module in the case of the 2930M and 3810M.
- Uplink switches need one or two uplink ports (to be aggregated with the other uplink switch member in the same stack). Where 4 uplinks per stack have been selected, these would normally be spread across 4 switches – for the 2930M and 3810M this would require additional IO modules.
- Member only switches rely on the uplinks from the other uplink switches in the same stack.
Click the plus over the “Calcs” heading if you want to see behind the scenes. There are no locks or passwords – you can use or modify whatever works best for you!