Help with IRF on pair of 5700-48G-4XG-2QSFP+ / JG894A

[Raland]

I gotcha, 40G on one end, just the four SFP+ slots on the other. If it works that would be a good way to go as it would leave me the 40G port on one switch and the four 10G ports on the other switch available. I haven't testing this yet but I suspect the second 40G slot on the splittler cable side is going to have to be IRF. I don't know if each 40G is on it's own "card" or if they are grouped together.

Cable wise, this is my first dip in the 10G pool so I ordered up a bunch of cables in about every flavor and length since i didn't know what I needed. Plus HP send a 1 meter cable when you at least 1.5-2.0 meters if you extend the server rails all the way but I digress :)

Since I haven't gotten it working yet, does IRF do essentially the same thing as my stacking modules in the 2920? I'll just use the mantenance port on the master switch and all the interfaces for both switches will appear 1/0/xx-2/0/xx ?  

[Raland]

Just to wrap this up. In was able to get IRF running successfully using only the 40G interface 54 on both switches. I know it is recommended to have more than one interface in your IRF port groups but I figure if the interface goes down, the whole switch is probably dead so multiple links wouldn't matter.

I am still using FGE port 53 in 4x10G mode with cables 53:1-53:3 plugged into the 3 HC 380 hosts 53:4 being unused. I'm not sure if I could still use just port 54 if port 53 was still in 40G mode.  I can see how the switch backplane might be divided into 40G modules, with each 40G in it's own slot and the four 10G ports in a slot so that would be the possible IRF logical grouping.

Appreciate all the suggestions. Now my last huddle to going live is getting Link-Aggregate ports working between two 10G ports on the IRF 5700 and two SFP+ ports on my stacked 2920 48G production switch.