Characteristics of VRs in a Group

When VRs are grouped together you need to choose a VR from the group and configure it as the primary VR using the CLI. Other VRs belonging to the group need to be added as secondary VRs. When a group is operational, the following approach maintains the same state across all VRs:
  • The primary VR sends VRRP (Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol) advertisements at the configured interval.
  • All the VRs in the group have the same VRRP state in a given router.
  • Only the primary VR registers for tracking objects (iproute tracking, ping tracking, VLAN (Virtual LAN) tracking) and processes tracked events. If any tracking configuration is present on secondary VRs, they are not effective when the VR is part of a group.
  • Secondary VRs inherit the priority of the primary VR. This is useful because when you want to change the priority of a group, you only need to change priority of the single primary VR.
  • The pre-empt configuration of the primary VR is applied for the group. If these configurations (pre-empt allowed, pre-empt delay) are present in secondary VRs, they are not effective.
  • The advertisement interval configuration on a secondary VR is also not effective.

Other per VR configurations/properties should continue to work as-is, such as accept-mode and host-mobility. All secondary VRs send advertisements at 40 seconds intervals. Sending advertisements help Layer 2 switches in the network to learn VMACs on a secondary VR‘s VLAN. Sending at a slower rate reduces processing load at control plane, on VRRP peers.

The other properties of individual VRs present in a group are not altered from their current behavior.