About VRRP

Cisco MDS 9000 Family switches are compliant with RFC 2338 standards for Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP) features. VRRP provides a redundant alternative path to the gateway switch, which has connectivity to the NMS. VRRP has the following features:

VRRP is a restartable application.

When a VRRP master fails, the VRRP backup takes over within three times the advertisement time.

VRRP over Ethernet, VRRP over VSAN, and Fibre Channel functions are implemented as defined in RFC 2338 and the draft-ietf-vrrp-ipv6 specification.

A virtual router is mapped to each VSAN and Ethernet interface with its unique virtual router IP, virtual router MAC, and VR ID.

VR IDs can be reused in multiple VSANs with different virtual router IP mapping.

Both IPv4 and IPv6 is supported.

The management interface (mgmt 0) supports only one virtual router group. All other interfaces each support up to seven virtual router groups, including both IPv4 and IPv6 combined. Up to 255 virtual router groups can be assigned in each VSAN.

VRRP security provides three options, including no authentication, simple text authentication, and MD5 authentication.

Note If you are using IPv6, you must either configure an IPv6 address on the interface or enable IPv6 on the interface. For more information about IPv6, see "Configuring IPv6 for Gigabit Ethernet Interfaces."