Setting Up An Irf Fabric; Overview - HP FlexFabric 5700 series Configuration Manual

Setting up an IRF fabric

Overview

HP Intelligent Resilient Framework (IRF) technology virtualizes multiple physical devices at the same layer
into one virtual fabric to provide data center class availability and scalability. IRF virtualization
technology offers processing power, interaction, unified management, and uninterrupted maintenance
of multiple devices.
Figure 1 shows an IRF fabric that has two devices, which appear as a single node to the upper-layer and
lower-layer devices.
Figure 1 IRF application scenario
IRF provides the following benefits:
• Simplified topology and easy management—An IRF fabric appears as one node and is accessible
at a single IP address on the network. You can use this IP address to log in at any member device
to manage all the members of the IRF fabric. In addition, you do not need to run the spanning tree
feature among the IRF members.
1:N redundancy—In an IRF fabric, one member acts as the master to manage and control the entire
•
IRF fabric. All the other members process services while backing up the master. When the master
fails, all the other member devices elect a new master from among them to take over without
interrupting services.
IRF link aggregation—You can assign several physical links between neighboring members to their
•
IRF ports to create a load-balanced aggregate IRF connection with redundancy.
Multichassis link aggregation—You can use the Ethernet link aggregation feature to aggregate the
•
physical links between the IRF fabric and its upstream or downstream devices across the IRF
members.
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