Setting Up An Irf Fabric; Planning Irf Fabric Setup; Determining The Number Of Irf Member Devices; Identifying The Master Switch And Planning Irf Member Ids - HP 6125XLG Installation Manual

Setting up an IRF fabric

You can use HP Intelligent Resilient Framework (IRF) technology to connect and virtualize HP 6125XLG
blade switches into a virtual switch called an "IRF fabric" or "IRF virtual device" for flattened network
topology, and high availability, scalability, and manageability.

Planning IRF fabric setup

Determining the number of IRF member devices

Choose HP 6125XLG blade switch models and identify the number of required IRF member switches,
depending on the user density and upstream bandwidth requirements. The switching capacity of an IRF
fabric equals the total switching capacities of all member switches.

Identifying the master switch and planning IRF member IDs

IRF member switches will automatically elect a master. You can affect the election result by assigning a
high member priority to the intended master switch. For more information about master election, see HP
6125XLG Blade Switch IRF Configuration Guide.
Determine which switch you want to use as the master for managing all member switches in the IRF fabric.
An IRF fabric has only one master switch. You configure and manage all member switches in the IRF
fabric at the command line interface of the master switch.
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 following physical ports can be used for IRF connections:
SFP+ ports and QSFP+ ports. For more information about the transceiver modules and cables
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available for the SFP+ and QSFP+ ports, see
Crosslink ports. A crosslink port is an internal port on a switch that connects to the switch in the
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adjacent horizontal interconnect bay in the C7000 enclosure. The 6125XLG switch has four
crosslink ports: Port 17, Port 18, Port 19, and Port 20. By default, the four ports are shut down to
Table 9, Table 10,
9
Table 1 1, and Table 12.