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 negotiates to become the primary unit.
2. The new primary unit changes the MAC addresses of all of its interfaces to the HA virtual MAC address.
3. The new primary units sends gratuitous ARP requests to switch 1 to associate its MAC address with the MAC addresses on the network segment connected to the external interface.
4. The new primary units sends gratuitous ARP requests to switch 2 to associate its MAC address with the MAC addresses on the network segment connected to the internal interface.
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, the new primary unit would load balance packets to the remaining cluster members.