Installing different software feature set on same 3750 stack

[ollydrisco]

Hello,

I have a stack of nine 3750 48 port PoE switches. Two of them were purchased as EMI and seven of them were SMI. I recently upgraded IOS, but ended up installing 'ip services' on all nine stack members. Before the upgrade, only the first two switches were running ip services - the rest ip base. I've tried looking but can't find the answer to my question - "How do I install one image on 2 switches, and a different image on the remaining switches. Do I have 'session' on the remote switches in turn and do them all individually? I hope not!

Can anyone offer any advice? It would be greatly appreciated.


Regards,
ollydrisco

[leolaohoo]

You can but I wouldn't recommend it because redundancy will not work.

The logic lies in the feature set. If you are, for example, running routing on the master (IP Services feature set) and the master fails, during the failover the back-up which is running IP Base would not be able to process the startup-config. So what's going to happen is that your new "master" will go into a boot-crash-loop.

[ollydrisco]

Hi leolaohoo,

Thanks for the reply.

I had stack members 1 and 2 running IP services for that very reason. Switches 1 and 2 have one layer three connection each to other offices. If Switch 1 (Master) were to fail, I maintain my connection to the rest of the WAN through the layer 3 connection on Switch 2, when it becomes Master. That's my logic anyway!

Do you know the commands to install the different feature set IOS images on different stack members?


Thank you very much
ollydrisco

[leolaohoo]

DISCLAIMER: I'm do not agree with what you are doing. But I'll give you the instructions anyway. If your stack should fail, don't blame me.

1. You need to know where you are going to install the IOS. For example, if it's switch #4, then the location is at "flash4:".
2. You need to delete the old IOS if the flash capacity is not adequate: delete flash4:<directory>
3. Copy the IOS (.tar file extension) to the switch: archive tar /x tftp://<TFTP IP address>/<filename>.tar flash4:


Hope this helps.

[ollydrisco]

Hi leolaohoo,

Thank you for your help - your answer was spot on. I'm fortunate enough to have spare switches to play with, so no harm would have been done, had it not worked - but it did, so thanks again.


ollydrisco