How vifs work in Data ONTAP

A vif (virtual interface) is a feature in Data ONTAP that implements link aggregation on your storage system. Vifs provide a mechanism to group together multiple network interfaces (links) into one logical interface (aggregate). After being created, a vif is indistinguishable from a physical network interface.

Different vendors also refer to vifs using these terms:

Virtual aggregations
Link aggregations
Trunks
EtherChannel

Using vifs provides several advantages over using individual network interfaces:

Higher throughput—Multiple interfaces work as one interface.
Fault tolerance—If one interface in a vif goes down, your storage system can stay connected to the network using the other interfaces.
No single point of failure—If the physical interfaces in a vif are connected to multiple switches and a switch goes down, your storage system stays connected to the network through the other switches.

Network interfaces grouped into a vif
This example shows how network interfaces are grouped into a vif.
Types of vifs
You can create three different types of vifs on your storage system.
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.
Second-level vifs
If you have more than one multimode vif, you can use the vif create command to group them by creating a second layer of vif called the second-level vif. Second-level vifs enable you to provide a standby multimode vif in case the primary multimode vif fails. You can use second-level vifs on a single storage system or in an active-active configuration.
Second-level vifs in an active/active configuration
In an active/active configuration, you can access data from both storage systems even if one of the storage systems in the configuration fails. With a second-level vif connected in a single-mode configuration, you can maintain connectivity to your storage system even if one of the switches fails. Thus, by using the two configurations together, you can achieve a fully redundant storage system connectivity architecture.