Catalyst 3750 vs 3560

There's a couple other changes, but they are fairly high-end/esoteric.

You'd have to study the two manuals side-by-side to find them.

But otherwise, yeah, thats the main difference.

The 3750 stacking uses a high bandwidth link that produces a single virtual switch with a single configuration.

I forget the bandwidth but it is MUCH more that a few Gbits per sec.

3560 I guess (not 100% sure) uses GB Ethernet as the interlink.

If I was using 3560 I woud not bother with the clustering bit since the network performance will be the same without it and it is an additional complexity that is not required. I would consider using clustering if I needed to deploy a large number of sites each with a few switches. However I don't see much advantage - imagine dealing with a cluster member failure remotely with a non-expert technician on site pluging in the new switch.

With the 3750 it is integral to the package and works very nicely but you still would want to figure out in advance how to replace a stack member.

the stack interconnect is also resilient (a ring of cables connecting the stack members)

so - you can alter the stack - eg replace a box, without disturbing the rest of the 3750s (not that it sounds like a good idea - i suspect the change control team wouldnt let me do it that way).

Thanks for all the replies!

Regarding stacking, if I have two rooms with a stack of 3750s in each, I presume that it would not be possible stack the rooms together via fibre?

The issue I was trying to highlight is not related to some on-the-fly switch replacement during production but the process of replacing a failed switch. If I recall correctly new stack members automatically get a new stack member number however the central config refers to the old failed stack member so a new switch would need to be reassigned to the number of the failed switch.

A while back I ended up doing a TAC case when I wanted to add a 3750 to a single existing switch since I could not understand the documentation regarding stack member numbers and I did not want to risk the new switch becoming the "owner" of the configuration for the whole stack.

At the end of the day it works out OK but this was not spelled out in the docs.

look figure 5

is 50cm, 1m and 3m stacking cable.

There are three lengths of staking cable andthey are relatively short: CAB-STACK-50CM= Cisco StackWise 50CM Stacking Cable CAB-STACK-1M= Cisco StackWise 1M Stacking Cable CAB-STACK-3M= Cisco StackWise 3M Stacking Cable

So you would need to use fiber with SFP's to interconnect two stack that are more than 3 metres apart

The 3750G-16TD-16 switch supports 16 10/100/1000 ports and one 10 Gigabit Ethernet XENPAK uplink in case you need that kind of bandwidth between the two closets

Thanks Merv,

If I connected the two stacks via fibre would that give me a single stack, or two stacks that have been uplinked?

I'm having trouble finding a definitive answer in the Cisco docs.

2 stacks with a LAN connection between them. separate configs etc for each stack

OTOH you may be able to cluster them - but that is just making the management obscure for no real gain.

Dont we all :)