How to manage vifs

You might want to configure and manage vifs on your storage system. You can create, add interfaces to, delete interfaces from, display status and statistics of, and destroy a vif.

The following guidelines apply to creating and configuring vifs on your storage system:

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

• The vif command
  You manage vifs on your storage system 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.
• Creating a single-mode vif
  You might want to create a single-mode vif, in which only one interface is active at a time and the others are ready to take over if the active interface fails. If you want a specific interface in a vif to be active, you need to specify that interface as preferred; otherwise an interface in the vif is randomly selected to be the active interface.
• How an active interface in a single-mode vif is selected
  When you create a single-mode vif, by default an interface is randomly selected to be the active interface, which is also known as a preferred interface. There can be only one active interface in a single-mode vif.
• Why you would want to designate a nonfavored interface
  The interface marked as "not favored" (using the vif nofavor command) can still become the active interface when all other interfaces in a single-mode vif have failed. Even after other interfaces come back up, a nonfavored interface continues to stay active until it fails or until you, the system administrator, change the active interface using the vif favor command.
• Creating a static multimode vif
  You can improve throughput by creating a static multimode vif. With a multimode vif, all interfaces in the vif are active and share a single MAC address. This logical aggregation of interfaces provides higher throughput than a single-mode vif.
• Creating a dynamic multimode vif
  You can improve throughput by creating a dynamic multimode vif. With a dynamic multimode vif, all interfaces in the vif are active and share a single MAC address. This logical aggregation of interfaces provides higher throughput than a single-mode vif. Dynamic multimode vifs can detect not only the loss of link status (as do static mulitmode vifs), but also a loss of data flow.
• About adding interfaces to a vif
  You might want to add one or more interfaces to a vif. You can add physical interfaces to a vif any time after you create it.
• About deleting interfaces from a vif
  You might want to delete a physical interface from a vif (for example when the interface might need maintenance). The vif must be configured down before you delete its interface.
• Displaying vif status
  You can display the current status of a specified vif or all single-mode and multimode vifs on your storage system.
• Displaying vif statistics
  You can display statistics for a specific vif or for all vifs. These include the number of packets received and sent by each vif.
• Destroying a vif
  You destroy a vif when you no longer need it or when you want to use the interfaces that form the vif for other purposes. After you destroy the vif, the links in the vif act individually rather than as an aggregate.