Master Election and Failover

Each VSRP device advertises its VSRP priority in Hello messages. During Master election, the VSRP device with the highest priority for a given VRID becomes the Master device for that VRID. After Master election, the Master sends Hello messages at regular intervals to inform the Backup devices that the Master is healthy.

If there is a tie for highest VSRP priority, the tie is resolved as follows:

• Layer 2 devices - The Layer 2 device for which the lowest four octets in the MAC address is highest will become the Master. VSRP compares the base MAC addresses of the devices.
• Layer 3 devices - The Layer 3 device for which the virtual routing interface has a higher IP address becomes the Master.