Planning Irf Topology And Connections - HP 5830 series Installation Manual

Prepare an IRF member ID assignment scheme. An IRF fabric uses member IDs to uniquely identify
and manage its members, and you must assign each IRF member switch a unique member ID.

Planning IRF topology and connections

You can create an IRF fabric in daisy chain topology, or more reliably, ring topology. In ring topology,
the failure of one IRF link does not cause the IRF fabric to split as in daisy chain topology. Rather, the
IRF fabric changes to a daisy chain topology without interrupting network services.
You connect the IRF member switches through IRF ports, the logical interfaces for the connections
between IRF member switches. Each IRF member switch has two IRF ports: IRF-port 1 and IRF-port 2.
An IRF port goes up when you bind the first member physical port to it.
When connecting IRF member switches, you must connect the physical ports of IRF-port 1 on one
switch to the physical ports of IRF-port 2 on its neighbor switch.
The switches can provide 10-GE IRF connections through SFP+ ports, and you can bind several SFP+
ports to an IRF port for increased bandwidth and availability.
NOTE:
• Figure 41
for IRF connections.
The IRF port connections in the two figures are for illustration only, and more connection methods are
•
available.
Figure 41 IRF fabric in daisy chain topology
and Figure 42 show the topologies for an IRF fabric made up of three 48G model switches
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