Configure Individual Interfaces

Individual interfaces are normal routed interfaces, each with their own IP address taken from a pool of IP addresses. The Main cluster IP address is a fixed address for the cluster that always belongs to the control node.

Individual management interfaces let you SSH directly to each unit if necessary, while a Spanned EtherChannel interface only allows connection to the control node.

IPS-only interfaces (inline sets or passive interfaces) are not supported for Individual interfaces.

Before you begin

  • You must be in Individual interface mode.

  • Individual interfaces require you to configure load balancing on neighbor devices. External load balancing is not required for the management interface.

  • (Optional) Configure the interface as a device-local EtherChannel interface, and/or configure subinterfaces.

    For an EtherChannel, this EtherChannel is local to the unit, and is not a Spanned EtherChannel.

Procedure

Step 1

Choose Objects > Object Management > Address Pools to add an IPv4 and/or IPv6 address pool. See Address Pools.

Include at least as many addresses as there are units in the cluster. The main IP address is not a part of this pool, but needs to be on the same network. You cannot determine the exact Local address assigned to each unit in advance.

Add Address Pool
Add Address Pool
Note

Although not common, if you want to set the MAC addresses manually, you can also add a MAC address pool object.

Step 2

On Devices > Device Management > Interfaces, click Edit (edit icon) for the interface you want to configure.

Step 3

On the IPv4 page, enter the Virtual IP Address and mask. This main ("virtual") IP address is a fixed address for the cluster, and always belongs to the control node.

DHCP and PPPoE are not supported. For point-to-point connections, you can specify a 31-bit subnet mask (255.255.255.254). In this case, no IP addresses are reserved for the network or broadcast addresses.

IPv4 Page
IPv4 Page

Step 4

From the IPv4 Address Pool drop-down list, choose the address pool you created.

Step 5

On IPv6 > Basic, from the IPv6 Address Pool drop-down list, choose the address pool you created.

IPv6 autoconfig and manual link-local addresses are not supported.

Step 6

Configure other interface settings as normal.

To set the MAC addresses manually, you can select the MAC address pool from the interface's Advanced page.

Note

If the cluster control link interface MTU is not at least 100 bytes higher than the data interface MTU, you will see an error that you must reduce the MTU of the data interface. By default, the cluster control link MTU is 1600 bytes. If you want to increase the MTU of data interfaces, first increase the cluster control link MTU. Note that we do not recommend setting the cluster control link MTU between 2561 and 8362; due to block pool handling, this MTU size is not optimal for system operation.