Irf Management - 3Com 4210G Series Configuration Manual

The precision of the system up-time is six minutes. For example, if two devices with the same
priority values reboot one after another within six minutes, they will have the same system up-time
and the last role election principle will be followed, that is, the one with the lowest bridge MAC
address wins.
IRF merge: The process of connecting two existing IRFs with IRF cables. After the mergence, IRF
election is held, and members of the loser side reboot and join the winner side as slaves.
IRF split: In an IRF, the failure of IRF cables or power-off of a member causes physical
disconnection between two devices, and the process is IRF split.

IRF Management

Member ID
An IRF uses member IDs to uniquely identify and manage member devices. For a device that does not
support IRF, an interface is named GigabitEthernet 1/0/1, where the first number is always 1; for a
device that supports IRF, if its member ID is 2, the name of the interface changes to GigabitEthernet
2/0/1, where the first number indicates the member ID of the device.
A member ID is a natural number in the range 1 to 10; the default member ID is 1. To ensure the
uniqueness of member IDs, you can plan and configure member IDs for IRF members before they join
the IRF.
After multiple devices form an IRF, a logical distributed device is formed. Each member device acts as
a card on the distributed device. The master acts as the active main board (AMB) and the slaves act as
the standby main boards (SMBs), and meantime, each member device also acts as an interface board.
As shown in Figure
After the IRF is established, the IRF system functions like a distributed device: slots 1,2, 3 and 4 are
inserted with boards, and each board has its own power supply unit (PSU), fan, CPU, console port and
Ethernet interfaces.
Figure 27-8 IRF
Master
(member-id＝1)
Slave1
(member-id＝2)
Slave2
(member-id＝3)
Slave3
(member-id＝4)
27-8, an IRF system comprises four members, which are numbered 1, 2, 3 and 4.
IRF link
After the IRF is
IRF link
established
IRF link
Virtual logical device
Main
Slave 1
Slave 2
Slave 3
26-8
slot 1
slot 2
slot 3
slot 4