Chapter 9 High Availability for FortiOS 5.0 : HA and failover protection : NAT/Route mode active-passive cluster packet flow : When a failover occurs
  
When a failover occurs
The following steps are followed after a device or link failure of the primary unit causes a failover.
1. If the primary unit fails the subordinate unit becomes the primary unit.
2. The new primary unit changes the MAC addresses of all of its interfaces to the HA virtual MAC addresses.
The new primary unit has the same IP addresses and MAC addresses as the failed primary unit.
3. The new primary units sends gratuitous ARP packets from the internal interface to the 10.11.101.0 network to associate its internal IP address with the internal virtual MAC address.
4. The new primary units sends gratuitous ARP packets to the 172.20.120.0 to associate its external IP address with the external virtual MAC address.
5. Traffic sent to the cluster is now received and processed by the new primary unit.
If there were more than two cluster units in the original cluster, these remaining units would become subordinate units.