Irf Management - HP 4800G Series Configuration Manual

The current master wins, even if a new member has a higher priority. (When an IRF is being formed,
there is no master, and all member devices consider themselves as the master, so this principle will
be skipped)
A member with a higher priority wins.
A member with the longest system up-time wins.
A member with the lowest bridge MAC address wins.
In this stage, member ID collision, software version loading and IRF merging are also handled, which
are discussed in the later sections.
When a device is booted, it first collects topology information and then participates in the role election.
After that, the IRF system can run normally. When the role election is finished, the IRF enters the next
stage: IRF maintenance.
The precision of the system up-time is six minutes. For example, if two devices with the same
priority values reboot one after another within six minutes, they will have the same system up-time
and the last role election principle will be followed, that is, the one with the lowest bridge MAC
address wins.
IRF merge: The process of connecting two existing IRFs with IRF cables. After the mergence, IRF
election is held, and members of the loser side reboot and join the winner side as slaves.
IRF split: In an IRF, the failure of IRF cables or power-off of a member causes physical
disconnection between two devices, and the process is IRF split.

IRF Management

Member ID
An IRF uses member IDs to uniquely identify and manage member devices. For a device that does not
support IRF, an interface is named GigabitEthernet 1/0/1, where the first number is always 1; for a
device that supports IRF, if its member ID is 2, the name of the interface changes to GigabitEthernet
2/0/1, where the first number indicates the member ID of the device.
A member ID is a natural number in the range 1 to 10; the default member ID is 1. To ensure the
uniqueness of member IDs, you can plan and configure member IDs for IRF members before they join
the IRF.
After multiple devices form an IRF, a logical distributed device is formed. Each member device acts as a
card on the distributed device. The master acts as the active main board (AMB) and the slaves act as
the standby main boards (SMBs), and meantime, each member device also acts as an interface board.
As shown in Figure
After the IRF is established, the IRF system functions like a distributed device: slots 1,2, 3 and 4 are
inserted with boards, and each board has its own power supply unit (PSU), fan, CPU, console port and
Ethernet interfaces.
1-8, an IRF system comprises four members, which are numbered 1, 2, 3 and 4.
1-8