VRRP Configuration (Tasks)

A VRRP router executes VRRP and works with other VRRP routers participating with the same virtual router. VRRP has a set of virtual IP addresses.

This chapter describes the following sections:

• VRRP VNIC Creation

• vrrpadm Configuration

• Security Considerations

Within a LAN, each virtual router is uniquely identified by the VRID, address family and is associated with a set of protected virtual IP addresses.

Each participating VRRP router has additional parameters such as priority, advertisement interval, and accept mode. At one time, only one VRRP router (the Master) will assume the responsibility of the virtual router and forward the packets sent to the virtual IP addresses.

Whenever the master fails, the other participating VRRP routers will detect its absence and another VRRP router will be elected as the master and assume the responsibility.

All the VRRP routers with the same virtual router share the same VRRP virtual MAC address. The virtual MAC address is calculated based on the address family and the VRID of the virtual router (in hexadecimal format in Internet standard bit-order). For example:

IPv4: 00-00-5E-00-01-{VRID}

IPv6: 00-00-5E-00-02-{VRID}

Therefore, a special VRRP VNIC with the virtual MAC address must first be created in order for the VRRP router to work properly. All the IP addresses residing on this VNIC are regarded as virtual IP addresses protected by the VRRP router. Those virtual IP addresses reside in the backup router and are brought up when the router becomes the master router, thus providing high availability for these virtual IP addresses.