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IRF
Resilient virtual switching fabric
Introduction to IRF
H3C® switches utilize an innovative H3C technology—Intelligent Resilient Framework (IRF™)—that enables the creation of a resilient virtual switching fabric. An IRF-based network extends the control plane across multiple active switches, enabling interconnected switches to be managed as a single common fabric with one IP address; this increases network resilience, performance and availability while simultaneously reducing operational complexity.
Features
- Distributed Device Management (DDM) — Enables customers to configure and manage the multilayer switching entity (or Distributed Fabric) as a single entity via the command line interface (CLI), Web interface or Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). In the event of a failure in one of the switches, management access to the remaining switch is retained on the same IP address.
- Distributed Layer 3 switching capabilities — An IRF Distributed Fabric uses the Layer 3 switching capabilities of both switches for greater performance and scalability, but without the complexity of managing two separate routers.
- Distributed Link Aggregation (DLA) — Enables wiring closet switches or hosts to create aggregated links that are dual-homed across the switches in the Distributed Fabric. Should a port in the aggregated link fail, traffic is forwarded via the remaining ports.
- Distributed Resilient Routing (DRR) — Enables both switches in the Distributed Fabric to act as a single logical router. The switches use the same router interfaces and each other's routing tables, enabling each switch to locally route traffic for greater Layer 3 forwarding performance.
- Network level availability — IRF technology enables customers to design and implement core Gigabit backbones that feature no single point of failure—a safeguard against hardware, cabling or software failure.
Benefits
- Performance and scalability — The distributed nature of IRF technology takes full advantage of the high-performance, non-blocking switching capacity of each switch in the Distributed Fabric'yielding aggregate forwarding capacity in excess of 70 Mpps across the 48 switched Gigabit ports.
- Manageability — IRF Technology enables unprecedented levels of manageability across the two switches in the Distributed Fabric by offering plug-and-play setup, single IP address management, and fabric-wide configuration of all management, system and port features.
Switches can be stacked up to eight units high or up to 448 Gigabit Ethernet ports, with 96 Gbps resilient stacking bandwidth, all centrally managed, with high-end enterprise chassis-class availability.
