Stacking Deployment Guidelines; Constructing A New Stack From Scratch Or Adding New Units To A Stack - Arris Ruckus ICX 7850 Series Configuration Manual

Changes to Stacking in FastIron Release 08.0.90

Stacking deployment guidelines

Stacking deployment guidelines

This section provides guidance for constructing a new stack, adding new members, replacing members, or adding new links
within a stack. These tasks can be performed in several different ways. This section describes the most common methods. Other
methods are discussed in more detail in later sections.
NOTE
Adding new units or new links without spanning tree protocols (STP) may create loops. Loops cause high traffic in the
affected ports and may cause high CPU usage if the looped packets are trapped to the CPU. As a result, failure to enable
STP in a stack may have significant impact on traffic in a production environment. STP is enabled by default in switch
images. It is not enabled by default in router images.
NOTE
ICX 7150 and ICX 7250 devices must pre-load licenses to enable 10-Gbps stacking ports that allow a unit to join a stack.
Refer to the Ruckus FastIron Software Licensing Guide for details on ICX licenses.
Constructing a new stack from scratch or adding new units to a
stack
Consider the following points when creating a new stack or adding new units to an existing stack.
• The easiest way to create a stack or to add units to a stack is to use the stack interactive-setup utility. The stack
interactive-setup command provides two options. Option 2 is used to discover clean units. Option 3 can discover clean
or non-clean units. For a definition of "clean unit," refer to
• If you are configuring a stack in a production system, Ruckus recommends configuring spanning tree protocols (STP,
RSTP or MSTP) on the active controller before making connections. You can enable either global STP or STP only on the
default VLAN. If there are already loops in the system before you configure STP and if the looping packets have higher
priority than the STP BPDU packets, STP may not converge. In this case, disable or disconnect the looping links to break
the loops so that STP can converge. Then reenable or reconnect the links.
• If you are configuring a stack in a non-production system and you don't want to configure STP, the stack interactive-
setup or stack zero-touch provisioning utility can discover new clean units under looping conditions.
• Make all connections before entering the stack interactive-setup command.
• Ruckus recommends using stack interactive-setup option 2 to discover clean units.
• When a clean unit receives stack interactive-setup or stack zero-touch provisioning probes, it temporarily installs a filter
to drop all traffic except protocol packets on every port to break possible loops in case STP is not enabled. As a result, a
clean unit can be discovered by stack interactive-setup or stack zero-touch provisioning under looping conditions. The
temporary filter exists only during the stack interactive-setup or stack zero-touch provisioning process. Once the process
is completed, loops may recur if STP is not configured.
• Stack interactive-setup option 2 and stack zero-touch provisioning cannot detect non-clean units. Only stack interactive-
setup option 3 can detect non-clean unit. However, option 3 may fail under looping condition.
• All loops disappear after the new units are discovered and reload to join the stack. The connected ports become stack-
ports or stack-trunks.
• Be sure to enter the write memory command after new units join as stack members.
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Stacking terminology on page 19.
Ruckus FastIron Stacking Configuration Guide, 08.0.90
Part Number: 53-1005572-01