Multiple M4300 stacking design and connections

> Is this advisable or are there better approaches? If you want to do 1 stack, that would work (just keep in mind that you have to switch the mode of each ports from ethernet to stacking mode + a reboot to switch the port mode active. However it depends ... personally if that is your only stack, I'd perhaps separate into at least 2 stacks. The issue is that if you do updates - while you can do staged updates - if anything goes wrong you have to reboot the complete stack. If there is a bug in your stack, all stack members could be affected at once. I wouldn't do it to be honest. While the M4300 have been solid, bugs occur and having all in just 1 big stack, within 1 single logical unit and fault domain, not what I'd want to work with. While there is a standby stack master elected in a stack, crashes can occur. You might also like to idea of testing a new firmware on 1 switch / stack ahead before you ugprade the more critical or even core switch/stack... if you have 1 single stack there is no easy fire testing possible. It looks like the half-width 10G switch could be your core switch? If you added a second half-width switch besides it and make a stack there, then form a stack with the 2 larger ones and just use port-channel pairs between the stacks? It might depend on your actual need of SFP+ ports, however I tend to use cheaper short (usually red just for marking the importance/difference in role) Cat 6 cables as stack ports so the M4300-12X12F in my case and likely in other situations even smaller 8X8F would sufficient?