Vif management

About managing vifs  

You manage vifs on the filer with the vif command. This command enables you to create, add interfaces to, delete interfaces from, display status and statistics of, and destroy a vif.

Guidelines for creating and configuring vifs on a filer  

The following guidelines apply to creating and configuring vifs on a filer:

• You can group up to 16 physical Ethernet interfaces on a filer to obtain a vif.

  Filer network interfaces that are part of a vif do not have to be on the same network adapter, but Network Appliance recommends that all network interfaces be full-duplex.

• You cannot include a virtual LAN (VLAN) interface in a vif.
• The interfaces that form a vif must have the same Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) size.

  You can use the ifconfig command to configure the MTU size on the interfaces of a vif. You need to configure the MTU size only if you are enabling jumbo frames on the interfaces. For more information about jumbo frames, see Understanding frame size, MTU size, and jumbo frames.

• You can include any copper or fiber Gigabit Ethernet Controller numbered II or higher, or any 10Base-T/100Base-TX Ethernet Controller.

  Note
  Do not mix interfaces of different speeds or media in the same multi-mode vif.

• Some switches might not support multi-mode link aggregation of ports configured for jumbo frames. For more information, see your switch vendor's documentation.

The vif command syntax  

The vif command syntax is as follows:

vif create [single|multi] vif_name -b [rr|mac|ip] [interface_list]

vif {favor|nofavor} interface

vif add vif_name interface_list

vif delete vif_name interface

vif destroy vif_name

vif status [vif_name]

vif stat vif_name [interval]

For detailed information about the vif command and all the options available with this command, see the NetApp vif(1) man page.

Persistence of the vif command  

The following vif commands are not persistent if used at the command line; however, you can put any of these commands in the /etc/rc file to make them persistent across reboots:

• vif create
• vif add
• vif delete
• vif destroy
• vif favor
• vif nofavor

For detailed information  

For detailed information about how to perform specific tasks using the vif command, see the following topics:

• Creating a single-mode vif
• Changing an active interface in a single-mode vif
• Creating a multi-mode vif
• Adding interfaces to a vif
• Deleting an interface from a vif
• Displaying the status of a vif
• Displaying statistics of a vif
• Destroying a vif

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Part No. 210-00474
File: vifs4.htm
Last updated: 11/17/03 15:56:28