Setup 2 IRF ports instead of 4 HPE FF 5700-40XG-2QSFP+

[Alexandre96]

hello,

I'm trying to put in IRF 2 HPE FF 5700-40XG-2QSFP+ with 2 ports on each router.

I've seen on the HP configuration guide that the port of the routers works by 4.

I already tried to configure IRF with 4 port on each switch and with only 2 transceiver on each switch but it doesn't work.

I would like to know if it's possible to use only 2 port on each switch for the IRF ?

Thanks in advance,

Regards;

[Ivan_B]

Hi @Alexandre96 !

Unfortunately, the IRF feature works per port group and this model has its ports grouped by 4 physical ports in a group.

Here is what the IRF guide says:

When you use the 10GBase-T Ethernet ports as IRF physical interfaces, follow these restrictions
and guidelines:
• The 10GBase-T Ethernet ports are grouped by port number in order, starting from 1. Each group contains four ports. If you use one port in a group for IRF links, you must also use all the other ports in the group for IRF links. However, you can bind the ports to different IRF ports.
• Before you bind a 10GBase-T Ethernet port to an IRF port or remove it from the IRF port, you must shut down all the 10GBase-T Ethernet ports in the same group.
• Bring up the ports after you complete the operation.

Hope this helps!

[Alexandre96]

Hi,

Thanks for your reply,

There is no possibillity to "break" those groups or to reduce it manually ?

Can the ports be configure in IRF but not use ?

Thanks for your help !

Best regards,

[Ivan_B · Accepted solution]

Unfortunately, you can't break those groups into smaller chunks. It is ASIC's hardware design to use groups of 4 ports for certain features. But you are not obliged to have all 8 ports (4 on each stack member) wired, just configure all of them for IRF and wire as many ports as you wish - 1, 2, 3 or all 4. IRF will adapt and will use only active physical ports.

So in other words you can configure ports 1-4 on each switch for IRF, as:

Slot 1:
irf-port 1/1
port group interface TenGigE1/0/1
port group interface TenGigE1/0/2
port group interface TenGigE1/0/3
port group interface TenGigE1/0/4

Slot 2:
irf-port 2/2
port group interface TenGigE2/0/1
port group interface TenGigE2/0/2
port group interface TenGigE2/0/3
port group interface TenGigE2/0/4

and then you can wire up only XGE1/0/1,XGE1/0/2 on Slot 1 to XGE2/0/1, XGE2/0/2 on Slot 2 and IRF will work fine over those two wires. No issues with that. It's only one limitation - you won't be able to use the unconnected ports XGE*/0/3, XGE*/0/4 for normal traffic since they are configured as IRF and will work as IRF ports only.

[Ivan_B]

Hi @Alexandre96 !

Did you have time to try the solution proposed? Did it resolve the problem?

Thank you in advance!