Physical links - IRF

[johnk3r]

Hello,

is it possible to establish an IRF connection using the DAC cable mix with SFP +. Both connections in 10GB.

I did not find any information in the documentation...

Example attached.

[parnassus · Accepted solution]

Hi!

Specifically speaking about HPE 5510 HI I'm not aware of any particular (port) group related restriction (usage of SFP+ ports grouping when you need to bind them to a specific logical IRF Port) that will impose you to have both logical IRF Ports (so IRF 1 and IRF 2) of the same switch bound to the same physical interfaces types and quantities (physical interfaces' speed must be the same but you're already OK from that point of view)...well, usually one will deploy IRF by creating both logical IRF 1 and IRF 2 and thus bind them to the same number and same type of physical interfaces - that's for symmetry - but it's not a written rule...just a golden rule.

HPE FlexNetwork 5510 HI Switch Series IRF Configuration Guide (valid for R13xx software releases) reports instead these IRF Port binding restrictions:

IRF port binding restrictions

When you bind IRF physical interfaces to an IRF port, follow these restrictions and guidelines:

• The 10GBase-T Ethernet ports and SFP+ ports must operate at 10 Gbps, and the QSFP+ ports must operate at 40 Gbps. The four breakout SFP+ ports of a QSFP+ port cannot be used as IRF physical interfaces.
• IRF physical interfaces can be assigned to the same IRF port if they operate at the same rate.

So - IMHO - it should be possible to deploy an IRF Ring of four HPE 5510 HI switches with (a grandtotal of four, one per IRF Member) logical IRF 1 Ports - inter DCs - bound to SFP+ interfaces equipped with Short Range (SR) SFP+ Transceivers *and* the other (another grandtotal of four, one per IRF Member) logical IRF 2 Ports - within the same DC - bound to SFP+ DAC Cables.