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Forum Discussion
product suggestion: staggered reboot
Dear Netgear team, while fighting a different issue, I tried to solve by updating and rebooting our M4300-24x top-of-rack switches, where I want to share a suggestion for improvement: We're u...
Hi
This is sort of already possible and has been described by LaurentMa in the following thread: https://community.netgear.com/t5/Managed-Switches/M4300-stack-vs-non-stack-VMware-and-iSCSI-setup/m-p/1764261/highlight/true#M8037 (M4300 for iscsi storage)
... though manually and you need to be aware of some restrictions. In another thread (M4300 stack vs non stack, VMware and iSCSI setup) I've shared my experiences with that staged update method, how it worked in my case and where it has its shortcomings: https://community.netgear.com/t5/Managed-Switches/M4300-stack-vs-non-stack-VMware-and-iSCSI-setup/m-p/1763330/highlight/true#M8014
The method has some shortcomings and risks, but that sort of fully non-stop failover is really only possible with datacanter-focues switches usually playing in much higher price ranges than Netgear. And even there you need to look out if those switches support a staged update across a stack since definitely not all stackable switches (actually not many as I've found out) can.
Hi,
thank you for the pointers - if I read the linked messages correctly, it's basically the manual process version of what I described above. I'll give that a try the next time I need to update the switches, in order to reduce the actual "network down-time" of that server rack.
Regards,
Jens
I suggest that you "exercise" this procedure on a lab switch or a "not-so-important" stack during a planned maintenance window to get some "feel" how this behaves, before doing an actual upgrade on a more critical stack. Also rebooting the complete stack as has tended to be safest method in my case, so that is likely why Netgear suggests it as the recommended method.
Though IMHO they could promote that staggered method a bit more publicly.
I usually test a new release first on a not stacked unit, test it on a less important stacked setup then move the upgrade to the important stacks. It has also proven helpful to verify NSF failover was working correctly by moving the stack master after maintenance back to the original stack master before maintenance. (In our setup by convenience unit 1 is the stack master, unit 2 the backup master by setting priorities accordingly).
It has also proven helpful in my case to get some experience with the failover behaviour on M4300 stacks. Reading the difference in the CLI manual between 'initiate failover' and 'movemanagement' was eye-opening during the first maintenance. ;-)
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