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Configuring virtual MACs

September 14, 2021

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The primary and secondary nodes in a high availability (HA) setup share the virtual MAC address floating entity. The primary node owns the floating IP addresses (such as MIP, SNIP, and VIP) and responds to ARP requests for these IP addresses with its own MAC address. Therefore, the ARP table of an external device, such as an upstream router, is updated with the floating IP address and the MAC address of the primary node.

When a failover occurs, the secondary node takes over as the new primary node. The former secondary node uses Gratuitous ARP (GARP) to advertise the floating IP addresses that it had learned from the old primary node. The MAC address that the new primary node advertises is the MAC address of its own network interface. Some devices (a few routers) do not accept these GARP messages. Therefore, these external devices retain the IP address-to-MAC address mapping that the old primary node had advertised. This can result in a GSLB site going down.

Therefore, you must configure a virtual MAC on both nodes of an HA pair. This means that both nodes have identical MAC addresses. When a failover occurs, the MAC address of the secondary node remains unchanged, and the ARP tables on the external devices do not need to be updated.

For the procedures to configure a virtual MAC, see Configuring Virtual MAC Addresses.

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Configuring virtual MACs

September 14, 2021

Contributed by:

September 14, 2021

Contributed by:

Configuring virtual MACs

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