You use a second-level vif on a single storage system to provide a standby multimode vif in case the primary vif fails. You can provide additional redundancy by using two switches configured for multiple-port connections and four or more interfaces on your storage system.
You can set up your storage system with two two-link multimode vifs. Each vif is connected to a different switch capable of link aggregation over multiple ports. Next, you can set up a second-level single-mode vif that contains both of the multimode vifs.
When you configure the second-level vif using the vif create command, only one of the two multimode vifs is brought up as the active link. If all the underlying interfaces in the active vif fail, the second-level vif activates the link corresponding to the other vif.
In the following illustration, Secondlev is the single-mode second-level vif comprising the Firstlev1 and Firstlev2 vifs. Firstlev1 is initially the active interface; if Switch 1 drops both links, Switch 2 and Firstlev2 take over and maintain the connection to the network. For information about the commands to use to create the vif shown in this example, see Example of creating a second-level vif on a single storage system.
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Part No. 210-01082_B0
File: vifs14.htm
Last updated: 08-Dec-2005 13:27:19