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Angel_Lopez_116's avatar
Angel_Lopez_116
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Dec 01, 2014

Network interface naming convention

I know that the naming convention that applies to network interfaces is s.p where s is the slot and p is the port, as in 1.1. When I check my Viprion I see thinks like 1/1.1 and 2/1.1 so I'd say that the naming convention in this case would be b/s.p where b is blade and it seems that slot is always 1 for each blade.

 

Knowing all this I check now the network interfaces in my vCMP guests and I see thinks like 1/0.3, 1/0.4, 1/0.5 and 1/0.6 in one of the guests and 1/0.7, 1/0.8, 1/0.9 and 1/0.10

 

And I wonder, which is the naming convention for a vCMP system? It seems that ports 3,4,5,6 are assigned to first guest and 7,8,9,10 to the second one. Are port numbers 1 and 2 then reserved ports in any way? Why there are 4 ports? (has it something to do with the number of cores assigned to the guest?

 

I'm trying to understand all this, and I'm not finding documentation about this subjects :(

 

application delivery
LTM
management
vcmp
viprion
virtualization

3 Replies

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  • Jim_43841's avatar
    Jim_43841
    Historic F5 Account
    Dec 05, 2014

    The interface names you see inside the guest (0.x or blade/0.x) are internal interfaces behind the switch chip on the blade. They don't tie directly to any specific external port on the blade. The mapping from guest to external port is based on the vlan(s) assigned to that guest. Since you asked about reserved ports, the 0.1 interface is reserved, to the hypervisor. Other 0.x interfaces may also be unused depending on the specific hardware and BIG-IP version on the hypervisor. On the hypervisor, or in non-vcmp mode the system also uses 0.x interfaces, they are just normally hidden so they don't appear by default in the gui interface list or in tmsh show net interface. If you wish to see them, you may issue "tmsh show net interface -hidden."

     

    The short short version is that the 0.x interfaces are internal, and are allocated/managed by the system, there's no method for managing them directly as an end user. And inside vcmp guests, the external interfaces aren't directly visible anyway (except for some status info about trunks for HA purposes), the guest just works with the vlan objects.

     

  • Jim_43841's avatar
    Jim_43841
    Historic F5 Account
    Dec 05, 2014

    Re: Why there are 4 ports?

     

    Vcmp guests are allocated a number of internal ports matching the cpu count.