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nflnetwork29
New Contributor II

correct way to cable a stack of fortiswitches

I'm new to fortiswitch stacking and just looking fort some clarity around the redundancy of the cabling . 

 

If we have a pair of 448E switch in our Distribution layer (configuration of MCLAG) and I then want to connect 4 access layer switches (148F Series) - How would I stack these / Cable them?

 

would this be correct?

Do the 4 access layer switch need to daisy chained + switch 1 and 4 connect to disti layer?

 

 

2023-10-03_16-47-41.png

 

 

7 REPLIES 7
ebilcari
Staff
Staff

If this are standalone switches (not managed by a FGT) I don't  think that they can be stacked. Also the MCLAG is not supported for 1xx series. I guess you could configure LAG for the uplinks in the 1st and 4th switch and leave the interswitch links to be managed by STP.

- Emirjon
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nflnetwork29

i plan to use fortilink to manage everything. . the distribution layer switches we are using are the 4xx series . 

ebilcari

In FortilLink there are many advantages, practically every possible topology is covered in the guide here. Most of the interlink between the switches (ISL) will be discovered automatically.

- Emirjon
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Toshi_Esumi
SuperUser
SuperUser

"Stacking" is not supported by FortiSwitches. MCLAG doesn't work to set up mulitple switches to act  virtually as one switch. It's a different type of "redundancy" operation of switches. We had the same conversation recently.

https://community.fortinet.com/t5/Support-Forum/how-to-stack-fortiswitch/td-p/275150

 

Toshi

nflnetwork29

we are using MCLAG at the distribution layer only. how do we connect the 4 access layer switches?

Toshi_Esumi

If no stacking, individual connections from both MCLAG switches to each access switch should work as you described in the diagram.

 

Toshi

bents1
New Contributor

Yes they were are communicate with each other. Did run into a weird spanning treee like issue that i had to reboot one of the switches but wasnt that bad. probably coukd have lwt it sit longer but i was impatient. but that was about the biggest issue.

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