VSF member roles

Commander: Control and management plane protocols run on the Commander, which is responsible for managing the forwarding databases, synchronizing them with the Standby and controlling all line cards including that of the Standby.

Standby: Standby is a stateful backup device for the Commander and is ready to take control of the VSF virtual chassis if the Commander device fails. This enables the VSF virtual chassis to continue its operations seamlessly in the event of a failure.

Member: All devices in the stack other than the commander and standby are called member switches. The member switch does not run any networking protocols and has no states. The ports on this switch are directly controlled and programmed by the commander switch. When a standby takes over as commander, one of the member switches is upgraded to standby role.