Im currently working my way around the 3750 stack implementation, even though this technology has been around for years, I just got my hands on it a week ago. After reading the Cisco configuration guide about Managing Switch Stacks I’ve finished with still some questions left. One of these was about the whole IOS management of the stack.

It is written in the guide, that the Switch Stack itself will automatically do IOS up- or downgrades itself (auto-upgrade) as long as the switch in question is at least partial compatible to the stack and the IOS feature set on the Stack and the new switch are the same. But what to do with new stack members that do have a different IOS feature set? In my example an IP Services and an Advanced IP Services feature set and I want to have the Advanced with crypto set on both switches. Since Im too lazy to take out the new switch of the stack I thought there has to be an option to do that over console access and well here we go.

After some search on the CLI I found that it is possible to specify which stack members flash you want to see with the command sh flashX: while X is the Stack Member number of the switch in question. If you leave out the X, you’ll always see the Stack Masters flash, no matter on which switch on the stack you are connected to via console.

SW1#dir
Directory of flash:/

    2  -rwx         616   Mar 1 1993 01:38:42 +00:00  vlan.dat
    3  -rwx        2151   Mar 1 1993 01:40:43 +00:00  config.text
    4  -rwx           5   Mar 1 1993 01:40:43 +00:00  private-config.text
    5  drwx         192   Mar 1 1993 01:31:17 +00:00  c3750-advipservicesk9-mz.122-44.SE2
  393  -rwx         113   Mar 1 1993 01:31:17 +00:00  info

32514048 bytes total (19296768 bytes free)
SW1#dir flash1:
Directory of flash1:/

    2  -rwx         616   Mar 1 1993 00:01:35 +00:00  vlan.dat
    4  -rwx        2151   Mar 1 1993 01:40:43 +00:00  config.text
    5  -rwx           5   Mar 1 1993 01:40:43 +00:00  private-config.text
    6  drwx         192   Mar 1 1993 00:06:57 +00:00  c3750-ipservices-mz.122-35.SE5

15998976 bytes total (5487104 bytes free)

Based on that info it was quite clear that the delete and archive commands will work the same way to get the switch upgraded to the same version and feature set:

SW1#delete /recursive /force flash1:c3750-ipservices-mz.122-35.SE5
SW1#dir flash1:
Directory of flash1:/

    2  -rwx         616   Mar 1 1993 00:01:35 +00:00  vlan.dat
    4  -rwx        2151   Mar 1 1993 01:40:43 +00:00  config.text
    5  -rwx           5   Mar 1 1993 01:40:43 +00:00  private-config.text

15998976 bytes total (15993856 bytes free)

SW1#archive tar /xtract tftp://116.1.99.10/c3750-advipservicesk9-tar.122-44.SE2.tar flash1:

SW1#dir flash1:
Directory of flash1:/

    2  -rwx         616   Mar 1 1993 00:01:35 +00:00  vlan.dat
    3  drwx         192   Mar 1 1993 01:41:07 +00:00  c3750-advipservicesk9-mz.122-44.SE2
    4  -rwx        2151   Mar 1 1993 01:40:43 +00:00  config.text
    5  -rwx           5   Mar 1 1993 01:40:43 +00:00  private-config.text
  393  -rwx         113   Mar 1 1993 01:41:07 +00:00  info

15998976 bytes total (2781696 bytes free)

The guide itself states on how to reload a specific switch so no need to research for it:

SW1#reload slot 1
Proceed with reload? [confirm]
SW1#reload slot 2
Proceed with reload? [confirm]
Switch 2 reloading

All in all its nothing spectacular and most of you might have known that but it would be nice if could Cisco write that into their configuration guide, it would have saved me the time for researching it. A few minutes haha

Hello folks,

I found an interesting white paper on Cisco’s website about Stackwise feature on 3750 switches.

Here is the link