Nonstop Forwarding On The Stack; Hot Add/Delete And Firmware Synchronization; Metadata Considerations - Dell Networking N4032 Configuration Manual

1.5

Nonstop forwarding on the stack

The Nonstop Forwarding (NSF) feature allows the forwarding plane of stack units to continue to forward
packets while the control and management planes restart as a result of a power failure, hardware failure,
or software fault on the stack Master and allows the standby switch to quickly takeover as the Master.
1.6

Hot add/delete and firmware synchronization

Units can be added and removed to and from the stack without cycling the power on the stack. When
adding a unit, the Stack Firmware Synchronization feature automatically synchronizes the firmware version
with the version running on the stack Master. The synchronization operation may result in either an
upgrade or a downgrade of firmware on the mismatched stack member. In addition, the running-config
on the member is updated to match the Master switch. The startup-configurations on the standby and
member switches are not updated to match the Master switch. The hardware configuration of every
switch is updated to match the Master switch (unit number, slot configuration, stack member number, and
so on).
Note: Auto-downgrade of a stack is enabled by default. To avoid accidentally downgrading a stack, be
sure to disable auto-downgrade (CLI command: no boot auto-copy-sw allow-downgrade)
1.7

Metadata considerations

When creating a stack, the configuration information is metadata that is part of the hardware configuration
applied at boot time before the switch firmware is started (and before the startup configuration is read).
The stack information shown in the startup and running configurations is simply copies of the stack
configuration for the user's knowledge. The actual stack information used by the switch
is stored in the startup configuration.
stack member
A
the configuration that says
Since these are stack-capable devices, an un-stacked device is still considered a stack of one. Here is an
example configuration of a device that is
6 Stacking Dell Networking Switches: N4032, N4032F, N4064, N4064F
Daisy Chain topology
configuration is always present on stacking capable switches, so there always is a line in
stack and a second line that says
Ring (loop) topology
member
not
stacked.
is not
even if there are no devices stacked.
that which