In a method for managing a switch fabric comprising a plurality of fabric chips, each of said plurality of fabric chips comprising a plurality of port interfaces, a first configuration set and a second configuration set, each comprising a plurality of configuration registers for the port interfaces to use in calculating a port resolution for an incoming packet, are generated. In addition, a determination as to which of the first configuration set and the second configuration set the plurality of fabric chips are to use is made an instruction is communicated to each of the fabric chips to use the determined one of the first configuration set and the second configuration set.