Irf Management And Maintenance - 3Com S7906E Configuration Manual

After that, the IRF system is formed and the IRF enters the next stage: IRF management and
maintenance.
During the mergence, IRF election is held, and role election rules are followed. Members of the loser
side will reboot and join the winner side as slaves. Whether the device reboots automatically or reboots
with the execution of a command depends on the device model.

IRF Management and Maintenance

After role election, an IRF is established: all member devices operate as a virtual device on the network,
and all resources on the member devices are processed and managed by this virtual device.
Member ID
An IRF uses member IDs to uniquely identify and manage member devices. Suppose an interface on
the device operating in standalone mode was named GigabitEthernet 3/0/1; after the device joined an
IRF, it got a member ID of 2, and the name of the interface changes to GigabitEthernet 2/3/0/1. Member
ID is also used in the file system management, for example, path chassis2#slot1#flash:/test.cfg
indicates that a file named test.cfg is saved under the root directory of the flash on the SRPU in slot 1 of
member device 2.
Therefore, to ensure the uniqueness of member IDs, you need to plan and configure the member IDs of
devices uniformly before they join the IRF.
If the local active SRPU and local standby SRPU keep different member IDs of the device, the member
ID kept by the local active SRPU will be applied after the start of the device. If the device with the
member ID of 2 has only one active SRPU, after you plug in a standby SRPU that keeps a member ID
of 3, the member ID of the device is still 2 and the member ID kept on the standby SRPU will be
synchronized to 2.
IRF topology maintenance
In an IRF, direct neighbors exchange hello packets periodically. A device may not receive hello packets
if any of the following conditions occurs:
The link state is abnormal, that is, the link fails or is unidirectional.
The device is attacked.
Without receiving any hello packet from a direct neighbor within ten seconds, a member considers that
the hello packets timed out, and the slaves will reboot and try to join the IRF again.
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