R3303-HP HSR6800 Routers IRF Configuration Guide

1
IRF overview
The HP Intelligent Resilient Framework (IRF) technology creates a large IRF fabric from multiple devices to
provide data center class availability and scalability. IRF virtualization technology offers processing
power, interaction, unified management, and uninterrupted maintenance of multiple devices.
This book describes IRF concepts and guides you through the IRF setup procedure.
Hardware compatibility
This section describes the IRF and hardware compatibility.
Chassis compatibility
IRF is available only on HSR6802, HSR6804, and HSR6808 routers.
An HSR6800 IRF fabric can contain any combinations of these router models. For example, you can use
both HSR6802 and HSR6804 routers to build an IRF fabric.
An HSR6800 IRF fabric can have only up to two chassis.
Card compatibility
You must install the SAP-4EXP card to provide physical ports for IRF connection.
IRF benefits
IRF delivers the following benefits:
• Simplified topology and easy management—An IRF fabric appears as one node and is accessible
at a single IP address on the network. You can use this IP address to log in at any member device
to manage all the members of the IRF fabric. In addition, you do not need to run the spanning tree
feature among the IRF members.
• 1:N redundancy—In an IRF fabric, one member works as the master to manage and control the
entire IRF fabric, and all other members process services while backing up the master. When the
master fails, all the other member devices elect a new master from among them to take over without
interrupting services.
• IRF link aggregation—You can assign several physical links between neighboring members to their
IRF ports to create a load-balanced aggregate IRF connection with redundancy.
• Multiple-chassis link aggregation—You can use the Ethernet link aggregation feature to aggregate
the physical links between the IRF fabric and its upstream or downstream devices across the IRF
members.
• Network scalability and resiliency—Processing capacity of an IRF fabric equals the total
processing capacities of all the members. You can increase ports, network bandwidth, and
processing capacity of an IRF fabric simply by adding member devices without changing the
network topology.