126 Managing a Switch Stackin the stack. A second switch is designated as the Standby unit, whichbecomes the Master if the Master unit is unavailable. You can manuallyconfigure which unit is selected as the standby, or the system can select thestandby automatically.When units are in a stack, the following activities occur:• All units are checked for software version consistency.• The switch Control Plane is active only on the Master. The Control Planeis a software layer that manages system and hardware configuration andruns the network control protocols to set system configuration and state.• The switch Data Plane is active on all units in the stack, including theMaster. The Data Plane is the set of hardware components that forwarddata packets without intervention from a control CPU.• The running configuration and application state is synchronized betweenthe Master and Standby during the normal stacking operation.In a stack of three or more switches, Dell strongly recommends connectingthe stack in a ring topology so that each switch is connected to two otherswitches.Creating a PowerConnect 8024 StackYou can stack up to six PowerConnect 8024/8024F switches. PC8024/8024Fswitches can be stacked only with other PC8024/8024F switches. Create astack by connecting adjacent units using the 10G SFP+ fiber ports.Additional stacking connections can be made between adjacent switch unitsto increase the stacking bandwidth. It is strongly recommended that thestacking bandwidth be kept equal across all stacking connections, i.e. avoidmixing single and double stacking connections within a stack. Up to eightlinks can be utilized between two stacking peers.1 Use the CLI or web interface to configure the ports for stacking. Bydefault, the ports are configured to operate in Ethernet mode. For moreinformation about configuring the port mode, see "Stack Port Summary"on page 141 (Web) or "Configuring Stack Member, Stack Port, and NSFSettings" on page 145 (CLI). A reboot is required to enable the ports instacking mode.
