Irf Physical Port; Irf Domain Id; Irf Split - HP FlexFabric 12500 Series Configuration Manual

For two neighboring devices, their IRF physical links must be bound to IRF-port 1 on one device and to
IRF-port 2 on the other.

IRF physical port

IRF physical ports connect IRF member devices and must be bound to an IRF port. They forward the IRF
protocol packets between IRF member devices and the data packets that must travel across IRF member
devices.

IRF domain ID

One IRF fabric forms one IRF domain. IRF uses IRF domain IDs to uniquely identify IRF fabrics and prevent
IRF fabrics from interfering with one another.
As shown in
fabric 2. Both fabrics use the LACP aggregate links between them for MAD. When a member device
receives an extended LACP packet for MAD, it checks the domain ID to see whether the packet is from
the local IRF fabric or from a different IRF fabric. Then, the device can handle the packet correctly.
Figure 4 A network that contains two IRF domains

IRF split

IRF split occurs when an IRF fabric breaks up into two or more IRF fabrics because of IRF link failures, as
shown in Figure
forwarding problems on the network. To quickly detect a multi-active collision, configure at least one
MAD mechanisms (see
Figure 4, Device A and Device B form IRF fabric 1, and Device C and Device D form IRF
5. The split IRF fabrics operate with the same IP address and cause routing and
"IRF multi-active detection").
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