4. Identifying physical IRF ports on the member switches on page 39.
5. Planning the cabling scheme on page 40.
Planning IRF fabric size and the installation site
Procedure
• Choose switch models and 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 to implement the top-of-rack (ToR) access solution for a data
center.
NOTE: As your business grows, you can plug an HPE 5920 or 5900 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
Procedure
1. 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 HPE 5920 & 5900 Switch
Series IRF Configuration Guide.
2. 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.
Planning IRF topology and connections
You can create an IRF fabric in daisy chain topology, or more reliably, ring topology. In ring topology, the failure of one IRF link
does not cause the IRF fabric to split as in daisy chain topology. Rather, the IRF fabric changes to a daisy chain topology
without interrupting network services.
You connect the IRF member switches through IRF ports, the logical interfaces for the connections between IRF member
switches. Each IRF member switch has two IRF ports: IRF-port 1 and IRF-port 2. To use an IRF port, you must bind a minimum
of one physical port to it.
Setting up an IRF fabric
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