Planning Irf Fabric Setup; Planning Irf Fabric Size And The Installation Site; Identifying The Master Switch And Planning Irf Member Ids - H3C S5500-HI Switch Series Installation Manual

Step
4. Power on the switches
5. (Optional) Install an expansion
interface card
6. Configure basic IRF settings
7. Connect the physical IRF ports

Planning IRF fabric setup

This section describes issues that an IRF fabric setup plan must cover.

Planning IRF fabric size and the installation site

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.
Plan the installation site depending on your network solution, as follows:
Place all IRF member switches in one rack for centralized high-density access.
•
Distribute the IRF member switches in different racks for dispersed access.
•
NOTE:
An S5500-HI IRF fabric can have up to nine switches. As your business grows, you can plug an S5500-HI
switch into an IRF fabric to increase the switching capacity without any topology change or replacement.

Identifying the master switch and planning IRF member IDs

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.
NOTE:
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
S5500-HI Switch Series IRF Configuration Guide
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.
Description
N/A
See "Installing/removing an interface
See H3C S5500-HI Switch Series IRF Configuration Guide.
Connect the physical IRF ports on the switches.
Select appropriate cables according to physical IRF port types.
All switches except the master switch automatically reboot, and the
IRF fabric is established.
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