Understanding the network interfaces on your storage system

Types of interfaces your storage system supports

Your storage system supports the following interface types:

Ethernet--including quad-port Ethernet adapters
Gigabit Ethernet (GbE)
Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI)
Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM)--Emulated LAN and FORE/IP

Your storage system also supports the following virtual network interface types:

Virtual interface (vif)
Virtual local area network (VLAN)
Virtual hosting (vh)

Data ONTAP imposes a limit of 128 network interfaces (including physical, vif, VLAN, vh, and loopback interfaces) per storage system.

How interfaces are named

For physical interfaces, the interface names are assigned automatically based on the slot in which the network adapter is installed.

VLAN interfaces are displayed in the interfaceID_and_slot_number-vlan_id format, where slot_number is the slot in which the network adapter is installed and vlan_id is the identifier of the VLAN configured on the interface. For example, e8-2, e8-3, and e8-4 are three VLAN interfaces for VLANs 2, 3, and 4, configured on interface e8.

You can assign names for vifs and the emulated LAN interfaces.

You can use the ifconfig command-line interface (CLI) command or FilerView to display network interfaces on your storage system. For more information, see Configuring network interfaces.

How multiple ports are identified

Some Ethernet adapters support four ports. In the Data ONTAP context, these adapters are referred to as quad-port Ethernet interfaces, and sometimes shortened to just quad-port interfaces. Data ONTAP uses a letter to refer to each port on a quad-port interface. The following table shows the relationship of port numbers to letters.

Port number	Letter
1	a
2	b
3	c
4	d

Interface naming conventions

The following table lists interface types, their identifiers, and examples of names that use the identifiers.

Interface type	Interface type ID	Examples of names
Ethernet (single) and Gigabit Ethernet	e	e0 e1
Ethernet (quad-port)	e	e0a e0b e0c e0d e1a e1b
vif	Any user-specified string that meets the criteria specified in Prerequisites.	web_vif proxy_vif
VLAN	e	e8-2 e8-3
FDDI	f	f0 f1
ATM	a (used only to configure clusters)	a0 a1
ATM--Emulated LAN	el (default)	el0
ATM--Fore IP	fa	fa0

How Data ONTAP creates host names

The first time you run the setup program on a storage system, Data ONTAP creates a host name for each installed interface by appending the interface name to the host name of the storage system.

Examples of host names

Example 1

A storage system named toaster with a single Ethernet interface in slot 0 and a quad-port Ethernet interface in slot 1 has the host names given in the following table.

Interface	Host name
Single-port Ethernet interface in slot 0	toaster-e0
Quad-port Ethernet interface in slot 1	toaster-e1a toaster-e1b toaster-e1c toaster-e1d

Example 2

A storage system named toaster with a Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI) interface in slot 1 has the host name toaster-f1.