IRFs and BAGG

[johnnym57]

Hi. I have a pair of 5900s that are connected as IRF but don't seem to be passing traffic.  The IRF config looks normal and one is master and one standby. The two are linked by 2 x 10G fibres so that 1/0/45 and 2/0/45 are connected which are setup as IRF as below.  Do I need to add these ports also to a bridge-agg group  and setup as trunks in order that vlans and traffic pass between the two switches? If I do, will adding these to bridge-agg groups mess up the IRF at all so that both the switches can still be configured via a console?

irf-port 1/1
port group interface Ten-GigabitEthernet1/0/45
port group interface Ten-GigabitEthernet1/0/46

irf-port 2/1
port group interface Ten-GigabitEthernet2/0/45

port group interface Ten-GigabitEthernet2/0/46

Presently, there is no config on the ports at all, the config file shows the ports as below

interface Ten-GigabitEthernet1/0/45 
interface Ten-GigabitEthernet1/0/46

interface Ten-GigabitEthernet2/0/45

interface Ten-GigabitEthernet2/0/46

Thanks

[Brian_Dsouza]

@johnnym57 

I beliveve you missed out checking the IRF logical ports.

I logical ports are to be cross connected.

1/1 goes to 2/2 and 1/2 goes to 2/1.

You cannot connect 1/1 to 2/1 or 1/2 to 2/2.

One of the below should work:

irf-port 1/1
port group interface Ten-GigabitEthernet1/0/45
port group interface Ten-GigabitEthernet1/0/46

irf-port 2/2
port group interface Ten-GigabitEthernet2/0/45

port group interface Ten-GigabitEthernet2/0/46

OR

irf-port 1/2
port group interface Ten-GigabitEthernet1/0/45
port group interface Ten-GigabitEthernet1/0/46

irf-port 2/1
port group interface Ten-GigabitEthernet2/0/45

port group interface Ten-GigabitEthernet2/0/46

Hope this helps.

Have a nice day.

[VoIP-Buddy]

JohnnyM57,

To answer your question, the IRF turns the switches into a virtual switch that allows you to control the stack as one switch.  That said, you never put IRF ports in a bridge aggregation and it won't let you do it.  That is why there is no configuration on the ports.  Comware controls that.

There is constant communication going on between the switches.  The big win with this is that when you create bridge aggregation groups to a server, for example, you would connect a link from each switch to the server and build the link agg with ports from each slot.  THat would ensure that you don't have a single point of failure to your server.

The other important thing is for software upgrades in the future.  5900's and Comware 7 support ISSU for upgrades.  As long as you have dual paths set up to your servers, you can do a software upgrade, if the version supports it, with little or no downtime.

Regards,

David