Types of vifs

You can create three different types of vifs on your storage system.

These three types of vifs include:

• Single-mode vif
• Static multimode vif
• Dynamic multimode vif

Each vif provides different levels of fault tolerance, and multimode vifs provide methods for load balancing network traffic.

Starting with Data ONTAP 7.3.1, IPv6 supports both single-mode and multimode vifs.

• Single-mode vif
  In a single-mode vif, only one of the interfaces in the vif is active. The other interfaces are on standby, ready to take over if the active interface fails. Failure means that the link status of the interface is down, which signals that the interface has lost connection with the switch.
• Static multimode vif
  The static multimode vif implementation in Data ONTAP is in compliance with IEEE 802.3ad (static). Static multimode vifs do not support IEEE 802.3ad (dynamic), also known as Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP). In addition, Port Aggregation Protocol (PAgP), Cisco's proprietary link aggregation protocol, is not supported. Any switch that supports aggregates, but does not have control packet exchange for configuring an aggregate, can be used with static multimode vifs.
• Dynamic multimode vif
  Dynamic multimode vifs can detect not only the loss of link status (as do static multimode vifs), but also a loss of data flow. This feature makes dynamic multimode vifs compatible with high-availability environments. The dynamic multimode vif implementation in Data ONTAP is in compliance with IEEE 802.3ad (dynamic), also known as LACP.
• Load balancing in multimode vifs
  You might want to be sure that all interfaces of a multimode vif are equally utilized for outgoing traffic. You can use the load-balancing methods for equalizing traffic.