New 5800 Switches and IRF

[Tech_User]

I'm new to the world of IRF and HP Switches, i'm replacing our core switch on one of our sites with two HP 5800 series.

I have the commands and know how to configure IRF, i have also configured the first switch with all the relevant VLANs, Interfaces etc.

My Question (stupid as it may sound), do i have to configure the 2nd switch exactly (with all the Vlans/Interfaced etc) before i can configure IRF?

Thank you

[parnassus · Accepted solution]

AFAIK it's not necessary (or, better, it's not the correct way of proceeding): IMHO, once you setup the IRF Stack as the very first step, the IRF Members start acting and behaving as a single "Virtual Switch", that "Virtual Switch" should be configured (and managed) as if it were a single device (VLAN, Routing, Port Configurations...etc.)...you will continue to be able to manage the single device's port settings (as example) but that will happen "supervised" (and kept synced) by the actual IRF Master.

All the IRF Members will share the same Routing Table and all of them will be able to route packets received from other edge Switches (or Hosts) connected to the IRF Stack and that will happen because the IRF Master will run the routing protocol for the entire "Virtual Switch" you created.

[Tech_User]

Thanks for your input, i have now configured IRF without configuring the 2nd switch and its working well.

[parnassus]

Great!

[spgsitsupport]

Couple of nice guides to IRF configuration:

http://allhpnetworking.blogspot.co.uk/2010/10/hp-networking-series-example.html
http://networkguy.de/?p=1124