If Virtual Services are temporarily unavailable after a failover, try flushing the Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) cache on the next-hop Layer 3 device which the LoadMaster is connected to.

If that does not work, activate Virtual MAC and flush the ARP cache. Activating the Virtual MAC requires a reboot on both units.

Note: The Virtual MAC option is not available in Virtual or Cloud LoadMasters due to the inability to physically influence the units.

To activate Virtual MAC, follow the steps below:

  1. In the shared IP address WUI, go to System Configuration > HA Parameters.
  2. Enable the Use Virtual MAC Addresses option.

Selecting this option creates a shared MAC address for both units. When failover occurs, the LoadMaster handles the MAC address handover too. This allows the switches to keep the same MAC address and not worry about ARP caches or stale records. This is useful when gratuitous ARPs (used in communicating changes in HA IP addresses to switches) are not allowed.