Roles of LIF and its use case

[MetroLife]

Hi,

We have FAS 8040

Below are the Ports details:

e0M
e0a-e0d is a cluster ports
eoe/oe-e0h/0h ports (CNA ports)
e0i-e0l Gigabit Ethernet

Roles of LIFs

Node Management LIF:

This is LIF to manage particular node separarately and this can be configurigure during creating or Joining a cluster.

Example: e0M port is used for this function

Cluster-Management LIF:

This is used to manage entire cluster and its nodes that are associated to the cluster.

Data LIF:

 These lifs are used for NFS,CIFS,FC,FCOE,ISCSI traffic to their clients and This LIF is associated with a Vserver.  Data ports are eoe/oe-e0h/0h ports and e0i-e0l Gigabit Ethernet

Cluster LIF:

This ports are connected to another node in switchless connection or if it is switch based cluster then this ports are connected to the cluster switches and assigns IP automatical in same subnet (we can assign IP address manually when required).

The ports should be used for this role are  e0a-e0d.

Intercluster LIF:

As per netapp document they mentioned cross-cluster communication, backup, and replication. Intercluster LIFs can be configured on data ports or intercluster ports.

These LIFs can fail over to data or intercluster ports on the same node, but they cannot be migrated or failed over to another node in the cluster.

Now my doubts are

1. What are the intercluster ports in my setup? I need to buy separate cards for this purpose. As per Netapp doc i can also use data ports but i wanted to know whare are intercluser ports.

2. what does cross-cluster communication means?

3. These LIFs can fail over to data or intercluster ports on the same node, but they cannot be migrated or failed over to another node in the cluster. What does this means could you please mention example.

Please also correct me if i understands roles wrongly.

Thanks a lot in advance.

[Naveenpusuluru · Accepted solution]

Hi @MetroLife

Please go through the below explanation.

1. Cluster management lif : This will be configured during the cluster setup and also we can do it manually if you need additional one.

2. Node management lif : We will be having one node management lif for each node in the cluster. We can log in to the cluster using node management lif also.

3. Cluster lif :  This is for the nodes communication with in the cluster. We will call it as cluster private network. We need two 10 GB ports on each node inorder to configure this.

4. inter-cluster lif :  This is to establish the commmunication between two clusters. We will use these ports inorder to configure snapmirror, snapvault between two clusters.

5. data lif : These are for hosts access to storage. All iops will be running on these lifs only. The scope of these ports are vserver.

1. What are the intercluster ports in my setup? I need to buy separate cards for this purpose. As per Netapp doc i can also use data ports but i wanted to know whare are intercluser ports.

These are two 10 GB ports in node to establish the communication between all the nodes in the cluster

2. what does cross-cluster communication means?

This is nothing but communications between two clusters.

3. These LIFs can fail over to data or intercluster ports on the same node, but they cannot be migrated or failed over to another node in the cluster. What does this means could you please mention example.

If any problem with the physical port or connection link then the lif will be migrated to other ports in broadcast domain as per your failover-policy and failover-group. Please go through the below links.

https://library.netapp.com/ecmdocs/ECMP1196907/html/GUID-94D4F8DD-3437-4474-81A6-9DB6FF6A244D.html

https://library.netapp.com/ecmdocs/ECMP1636021/html/GUID-94D4F8DD-3437-4474-81A6-9DB6FF6A244D.html