H3C Technologies H3C S7500E Series Switches - Manual (Page 14)

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During the mergence, IRF election is held, and role election rules are followed. You need to manually
reboot the members of the loser side, and then they join the winner side as slaves.
IRF Virtual Device Management and Maintenance
After role election, an IRF virtual device is established: all member devices operate as one virtual
device, and all resources on the member devices are possessed by this virtual device and managed by
the master.
Member ID
An IRF virtual device uses member IDs to uniquely identify and manage its members. Member IDs are
used in interface numbering and file management:
z In interface numbering: Assume an interface on the device that operates in standalone mode was
named GigabitEthernet 3/0/1. After the device joined an IRF virtual device, it got a member ID of
2, and the name of the interface changes to GigabitEthernet 2/3/0/1.
z In file management: For example, when the device operates in standalone mode, the path of a file
was slot1#flash:/test.cfg. After the device joined an IRF virtual device, the path changes to
chassis1#slot1#flash:/test.cfg, which indicates that the file is saved on the card in slot 1 of member
device 1.
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 virtual device.
If the active SRPU and standby SRPU of a member device keep different member IDs of the device, the
member ID kept by the active SRPU is applied when the device starts up. 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 is synchronized to 2.
IRF virtual device topology maintenance
Direct neighbors of an IRF virtual device periodically exchange hello packets. A device may not receive
hello packets if either of the following conditions occurs:
z The link state is abnormal, that is, the link fails or is unidirectional.
z 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 virtual device again.
Besides, if the IRF ports are not connected correctly (that is, IRF-port1 of a device is connected to
IRF-port2 of another device), the slaves will reboot and try to join the IRF virtual device again.