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IRF between HP and Other OEM

 
RahulNair
Occasional Contributor

IRF between HP and Other OEM

Hi all ,

 

I am quite new to the HP Eco System .

I used to work with Cisco products for a long time .

 

I have an assoignment of conducting a POC for my client.Wherein , i need to establish an IRF Fabric ( with 5500 swicthes) and connect it to their native Entrasys Swicthes.

 

Now , i have gone through all the technical documentations about IRF , and it is pretty clear to me.

 

What i need to understand is how can i connect and IRF Fabric to  third party vendor swicth , in this case , ENTRASYS.

 

 

suppose i have three hp switches in the fabric and i need to run to two cables from each end , to an entrasys swictch.

 

Do i run stp in the fabric and allow it to converge with the Entrasys swicth ? Or

Do i run LACP between both the two ? If lacp , do i need to do anything else specifically , apart from the standard LACP procedures?

 

 

 

Thanks again ! 

5 REPLIES 5
dhoenel
Occasional Advisor

Re: IRF between HP and Other OEM

Hello quick and dirty,

 

you can't connect an HP IRF Supported Switch to a third party vendor.

 

enclosed a hp irf comp list

 

RahulNair
Occasional Contributor

Re: IRF between HP and Other OEM

Oh..

 

Ok.now i dont need to run IRF fabric on all swicthes .

Just the three HP Swicthes and then connect an uplink from it to the entrasys one.

 

Wont it work even in that case ?

 

                  IRF                          Trunk Link/LACP     

   [ Sw-1   Sw-2   Sw-3] ----------------------------> Entrasys/Cisco/etc.

      Logically 1 switch.

dhoenel
Occasional Advisor

Re: IRF between HP and Other OEM

Yes that works.
Important is, when you want configur a link-aggragatin (bound two ports together) use LACP on both sides. ON HP Switch and on Entrasys or CISCO
RahulNair
Occasional Contributor

Re: IRF between HP and Other OEM

OK..phew ..nice to know .
OK so if not for lacp ..I can even go for normal trunking to connect the two right ?..and the setup would work just like two logical switches connected to each other ..
Peter_Debruyne
Honored Contributor

Re: IRF between HP and Other OEM

an IRF system behaves like a single switch, so just setup link-aggregation between the IRF system and the other vendor peer switch.

in Comware lingo, you would define a bridge-aggregation. Both LACP and static link-aggregation (no protocol) are possible. Depending on vendor, LACP can be slow (Comware to Comware LACP is subsecond, but e.g. Comware to some older Nortel switches LACP takes about 10 seconds (due to Nortel slow LACP processing)).

 

###################

To configure static link-agg:

# 1 define bridge

int br 1

 quit

# 2 link interfaces (1 or more from each IRF member) to bridge-aggregation id (1 in this example)

 # unit 1 port

int g1/0/1

 port link-agg group 1

 # unit 2 port

int g2/0/1

 port link-agg group 1

 

# 3 configure bagg interface vlan support as needed, example for vlan trunk:

int br 1

 port link-type trunk

 port trunk permit vlan 1 to 10

 

# verify

display int brief

display link-agg summary

display link-agg verbose br 1

display port trunk

 

 

###################

To define an LACP link-agg, same steps, only in step 1:

# 1 define bridge

int br 1

 link-aggregation mode dynamic

 quit

# now follow same steps as before.

 

You cannot change the bagg state (lacp vs non-lacp) on the fly, you need to remove the interfaces first, then link again.

Use fast ping tools to check how fast the failover really works (fping), link ping every 10ms.

 

Good luck !