Information About HSRP
HSRP is a first-hop redundancy protocol (FHRP) that allows a transparent failover of the first-hop IP router. HSRP provides first-hop routing redundancy for IP hosts on Ethernet networks configured with a default router IP address. You use HSRP in a group of routers for selecting an active router and a standby router. In a group of routers, the active router is the router that routes packets; the standby router is the router that takes over when the active router fails or when preset conditions are met.
Many host implementations do not support any dynamic router discovery mechanisms but can be configured with a default router. Running a dynamic router discovery mechanism on every host is not feasible for a number of reasons, including administrative overhead, processing overhead, and security issues. HSRP provides failover services to these hosts.
When you use HSRP, you configure the HSRP virtual IP address as the host’s default router (instead of the IP address of the actual router). The virtual IP address is an IPv4address that is shared among a group of routers that run HSRP.
When you configure HSRP on a network segment, you provide a virtual MAC address and a virtual IP address for the HSRP group. You configure the same virtual address on each HSRP-enabled interface in the group. You also configure a unique IP address and MAC address on each interface that acts as the real address. HSRP selects one of these interfaces to be the active router. The active router receives and routes packets destined for the virtual MAC address of the group.
HSRP detects when the designated active router fails. At that point, a selected standby router assumes control of the virtual MAC and IP addresses of the HSRP group. HSRP also selects a new standby router at that time.
HSRP uses a priority mechanism to determine which HSRP-configured interface becomes the default active router. To configure an interface as the active router, you assign it with a priority that is higher than the priority of all the other HSRP-configured interfaces in the group. The default priority is 100, so if you configure just one interface with a higher priority, that interface becomes the default active router.
Interfaces that run HSRP send and receive multicast User Datagram Protocol (UDP)-based hello messages to detect a failure and to designate active and standby routers. When the active router fails to send a hello message within a configurable period of time, the standby router with the highest priority becomes the active router. The transition of packet forwarding functions between the active and standby router is completely transparent to all hosts on the network.
You can configure multiple HSRP groups on an interface.
The following figure shows a network configured for HSRP. By sharing a virtual MAC address and a virtual IP address, two or more interfaces can act as a single virtual router.
The virtual router does not physically exist but represents the common default router for interfaces that are configured to provide backup to each other. You do not need to configure the hosts on the LAN with the IP address of the active router. Instead, you configure them with the IP address (virtual IP address) of the virtual router as their default router. If the active router fails to send a hello message within the configurable period of time, the standby router takes over, responds to the virtual addresses, and becomes the active router, assuming the active router duties. From the host perspective, the virtual router remains the same.
Packets received on a routed port destined for the HSRP virtual IP address will terminate on the local router, regardless of whether that router is the active HSRP router or the standby HSRP router. This includes ping and Telnet traffic. Packets received on a Layer 2 (VLAN) interface destined for the HSRP virtual IP address will terminate on the active router.
HSRP for IPv4
HSRP routers communicate with each other by exchanging HSRP hello packets. These packets are sent to the destination IP multicast address 184.108.40.206 (reserved multicast address used to communicate to all routers) on UDP port 1985. The active router sources hello packets from its configured IP address and the HSRP virtual MAC address while the standby router sources hellos from its configured IP address and the interface MAC address, which may or may not be the burned-in address (BIA). The BIA is the last six bytes of the MAC address that is assigned by the manufacturer of the network interface card (NIC).
Because hosts are configured with their default router as the HSRP virtual IP address, hosts must communicate with the MAC address associated with the HSRP virtual IP address. This MAC address is a virtual MAC address, 0000.0C07.ACxy, where xy is the HSRP group number in hexadecimal based on the respective interface. For example, HSRP group 1 uses the HSRP virtual MAC address of 0000.0C07.AC01. Hosts on the adjoining LAN segment use the normal Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) process to resolve the associated MAC addresses.
HSRP version 2 uses the new IP multicast address 220.127.116.11 to send hello packets instead of the multicast address of 18.104.22.168, which is used by version 1. HSRP version 2 permits an expanded group number range of 0 to 4095 and uses a new MAC address range of 0000.0C9F.F000 to 0000.0C9F.FFFF.
Cisco NX-OS supports HSRP version 1 by default. You can configure an interface to use HSRP version 2.
HSRP version 2 has the following enhancements to HSRP version 1:
Expands the group number range. HSRP version 1 supports group numbers from 0 to 255. HSRP version 2 supports group numbers from 0 to 4095.
For IPv4, uses the IPv4 multicast address 22.214.171.124to send hello packets instead of the multicast address of 126.96.36.199, which is used by HSRP version 1.
Uses the MAC address range from 0000.0C9F.F000 to 0000.0C9F.FFFF. HSRP version 1 uses the MAC address range 0000.0C07.AC00 to 0000.0C07.ACFF.
Adds support for MD5 authentication.
When you change the HSRP version, Cisco NX-OS reinitializes the group because it now has a new virtual MAC address.
HSRP version 2 has a different packet format than HSRP version 1. The packet format uses a type-length-value (TLV) format. HSRP version 2 packets received by an HSRP version 1 router are ignored.
HSRP message digest 5 (MD5) algorithm authentication protects against HSRP-spoofing software and uses the industry-standard MD5 algorithm for improved reliability and security. HSRP includes the IPv4 address in the authentication TLVs.
Routers that are configured with HSRP exchange the following three types of multicast messages:
Hello—The hello message conveys the HSRP priority and state information of the router to other HSRP routers.
Coup—When a standby router wants to assume the function of the active router, it sends a coup message.
Resign—A router that is the active router sends this message when it is about to shut down or when a router that has a higher priority sends a hello or coup message.
HSRP Load Sharing
HSRP allows you to configure multiple groups on an interface. You can configure two overlapping IPv4 HSRP groups to load share traffic from the connected hosts while providing the default router redundancy expected from HSRP. the following figure shows an example of a load-sharing HSRP IPv4 configuration.
Figure HSRP Load Sharing shows two routers (A and B) and two HSRP groups. Router A is the active router for group A but is the standby router for group B. Similarly, router B is the active router for group B and the standby router for group A. If both routers remain active, HSRP load balances the traffic from the hosts across both routers. If either router fails, the remaining router continues to process traffic for both hosts.
Object Tracking and HSRP
You can use object tracking to modify the priority of an HSRP interface based on the operational state of another interface. Object tracking allows you to route to a standby router if the interface to the main network fails.
Two objects that you can track are the line protocol state of an interface or the reachability of an IP route. If the specified object goes down, Cisco NX-OS reduces the HSRP priority by the configured amount. For more information, see the Configuring HSRP Object Tracking section.
HSRP supports Virtual Routing and Forwarding instances (VRFs). By default, Cisco NX-OS places you in the default VRF unless you specifically configure another VRF.
If you change the VRF membership of an interface, Cisco NX-OS removes all Layer 3 configuration, including HSRP.
For more information, see Configuring Layer 3 Virtualization.
HSRP Subnet VIP
You can configure an HSRP subnet virtual IP (VIP) address in a different subnet than that of the interface IP address.
This feature enables you to conserve public IPv4 addresses by using a VIP as a public IP address and an interface IP as a private IP address. HSRP subnet VIPs are not needed for IPv6 addresses because a larger pool of IPv6 addresses is available and because routable IPv6 addresses can be configured on an SVI and used with regular HSRP.
This feature also enables periodic ARP synchronization to vPC peers and allows ARP to source with the VIP when an HSRP subnet VIP is configured for hosts in the VIP subnet.
HSRP subnet VIP should be configured in the virtual port channel (vPC) topology. The HSRP VIP feature works only on HSRP with vPC topologies.
In a subnet VIP configuration, the VIP address must be in a different subnet than the interface IP subnet. Without the subnet VIP configuration, the VIP address must be in the same subnet of the interface IP subnet.
The following is an example for subnet VIP address configuration wherein the VIP address is not configured in the same subnet of the interface IP subnet.
switch# configure terminal switch(config)# feature hsrp switch(config)# feature interface-vlan switch(config)# interface vlan 2 switch(config-if)# ip address 192.0.2.1/24 switch(config-if)# hsrp 2 switch(config-if-hsrp)# ip 188.8.131.52/24
The following is an example for VIP address mismatch. Here the VIP address is not in the same subnet of the interface IP subnet.
switch# configure terminal switch(config)# feature hsrp switch(config)# feature interface-vlan switch(config)# interface vlan 2 switch(config-if)# ip address 192.0.2.1/24 switch(config-if)# hsrp 2 switch(config-if-hsrp)# ip 184.108.40.206 !ERROR: Invalid IP address(Mismatch with IP subnet)!
The following is an example for VIP address mismatch. Here the subnet VIP address is configured along with VIP address in the same subnet of the interface IP subnet.
switch# configure terminal switch(config)# feature hsrp switch(config)# feature interface-vlan switch(config)# interface vlan 2 switch(config-if)# ip address 192.0.2.1/24 switch(config-if)# hsrp 2 switch(config-if-hsrp)# ip 192.0.2.10/24 !ERROR: Invalid IP address(Mismatch with IP subnet)!