Question : Problem: Failover Switching

I have four switches, 2 cisco 2960 and 2 dell powerconnect 5324 that are redundant to each other. All switches have a physical connection to each other. Currently when one switch goes down I have to manually failover to the second switch. Can I do a automatic failover similar to hsrp with cisco routers. Will the automatic failover work with different switches, Dell and Cisco.

Answer : Problem: Failover Switching

your dell switches should be capable of doing VRRP
hsrp is equivalent to standard vrrp protocol

the same way you configure vlans with ips and configure one ip (which is gw for workstations) to be handled by switches. for example:

vlan 10:
switch1 addr 192.168.1.252/24
switch2 addr 192.168.1.253/24
vrrp address 192.168.1.254/24, which is virtual and is monitored by both of switches (one of them is master, second - slave)