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We often receive the following campus design question: “do you support switch stacking?” This is a fair question, as many of the legacy vendors have promoted stacking designs for the past decade. It’s popular enough that people ask for it, so we must support it, right?
Well, the popular option isn’t always the best one, and switch stacking designs are a very good example of that philosophy. So when people ask if we support stacking, we think to ourselves “heck, no” before politely telling them that we do not because better options exist.
“Perfection is attained, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to take away.”
At Cumulus Networks, we believe that simplicity is the corner-stone of network design.
Or, to say it another way, complex designs fail in complex ways (shoutout to Eric Pulvino for that quote!). Our former Chief Scientist, Dinesh Dutt, gave an excellent explanation around the importance of simple building blocks in his Tech Field Day 9 Presentation (6min 50 seconds in).
Let’s address a little history on switch stacking and then break down the major technical downfalls of a stacking design, the stacking protocol itself, Continue reading