H3C Technologies H3C S10500 Series Switches - Manual (Page 11)

IRF partition
IRF partition occurs when an IRF fabric splits into two or more IRF fabrics because of IRF link failures, as
shown in Figure 4 . The partitioned IRF fabrics operate with the same IP address and cause routing and
forwarding problems on the network.
Figure 4 IRF partition
IRF merge
IRF merge occurs when two partitioned IRF fabrics re-unite or when you configure and connect two
independent IRF fabrics to be one IRF fabric, as shown in Figure 5 .
Figure 5 IRF merge
Member priority
Member priority determines the role of a member switch during the role election process. A member with
a higher priority is more likely to be a master.
The priority of a switch defaults to 1. You can modify the priority at the CLI.
Establishment, operation, and maintenance of an
IRF fabric
IRF fabric management involves these stages: Connecting the IRF member switches , Topology collection ,
Master election , and IRF fabric management and maintenance .
Connecting the IRF member switches
Connection medium
To establish an IRF fabric, physically connect the physical IRF ports of member switches.
The switches use 10 GE optical ports as physical IRF ports. You can connect physical IRF ports with fibers.
Connection requirements
As shown in Figure 6 , connect the physical ports bound to IRF-Port1 on one switch to the physical ports
bound to the IRF-Port2 on its neighbor switch.
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