HSRP States

justin putman · ‎11-20-2009

Guys,

I noticed something interesting regargind HSRP and was wondering if someone could shed some light on the subject. I have two 6509e switches configured for HSRP on 10 different VLANs. The primary switch is set to Active using its default priority while the secondary switch is set to Standby with a priority of 110. This is for all VLANs. I noticed this morning that the Standby switch change its state from Standby to Active for 2 of the VLANs. However, the primary switch did NOT change from Active to Standby at all.

So how is it possible for 1 network device to become the Active device without the other device moving to Standby?

Thanks,

Justin

Jon Marshall · ‎11-20-2009

Justin

Do both switches think they are active for these 2 vlans then ?

What does the output of "sh standby brief" look like.

Are you tracking any interfaces ?

What are your HSRP timers set to ?

Jon

justin putman · ‎11-20-2009

Jon,

Yes both switches believe that they are the Active switch for both VLANs. However, the remaining VLANs still believe the primary switch is Active while the secondary switch is Standby.

This incident only occurred for a brief msec as the logs on the standby switch indicate the change back to Standby.

Nov 20 06:23:10 CST: %STANDBY-6-STATECHANGE: Vlan23 Group 23 state Standby -> Active
Nov 20 06:23:10 CST: %STANDBY-6-STATECHANGE: Vlan11 Group 5 state Standby -> Active
Nov 20 06:23:11 CST: %STANDBY-6-STATECHANGE: Vlan11 Group 5 state Active -> Speak
Nov 20 06:23:11 CST: %STANDBY-6-STATECHANGE: Vlan23 Group 23 state Active -> Speak

I am tracking an external interface out to the ISP on both switches and the HSRP timers are set to Hello 150 msec and holdtime 455 msec.

Thanks,

Justin

Jon Marshall · ‎11-20-2009

Justin

Is the tracked interface being tracked for all vlans or just these 2.

If it is for all vlans then you could try increasing your HSRP timers as it may simply be that a couple of the HSRP hello packets are getting dropped between the 2 switches. Do you know when the switchover happened if the link between the 2 switches was being heavily utilised ?

Jon

justin putman · ‎11-20-2009

Jon,

The tracked interface is for all VLANs, not just those two. I am interested in thinking that HSRP packets are being dropped but in just those two specific VLANs? If the links between the two switches were being heavily utilized, wouldn't all VLANs switch over to Primary? I mean I understand that it might be vlan specific, but 1 of the VLANs is a mgmt vlan that should have very little traffic.