One VLAN is master on both HA's??? Strange networking issue

Derelict

@mrpete This is invariably a switching issue. If the secondary does not receive the heartbeats sent from the primary it will think there is a failure and assume the MASTER role.

Even if the primary receives the resulting heartbeats from the secondary, it will remain MASTER too since it is advskew 0 and the secondary is advskew 100.

awebster

@derelict said in One VLAN is master on both HA's??? Strange networking issue:

@mrpete This is invariably a switching issue. If the secondary does not receive the heartbeats sent from the primary it will think there is a failure and assume the MASTER role.

Exactly, my thoughts are that there is MAC address confusion at the switching level hence the verification necessary to make sure there is no incorrect configs as they'd be very hard to spot given that the CARP packets don't emanate with the NIC's real MAC address.

MrPete

@awebster Ah HA! Key to IPV6 CARP is you create TWO CARP Virtual IP's :)

MrPete

@derelict Understood. What's so strange is that most VLAN's are working just fine and DO see the heartbeats.

I'm digging in on it further...

awebster

@mrpete Maybe try changing the VID on the problematic VLAN on both sides to see if that makes a difference since we know this will cause the source MAC address to change.

Derelict

@awebster pfSense's tcpdump groks CARP. If you pcap for it you can generally tell primary from secondary advertisements by the advskew (0 and 100 respectively by default).

MrPete

@awebster and @Derelict My problem: secondary does not see ANY packets from primary on that VLAN, period. This presumably has nothing to do with CARP??

Quite confusing to me, how a single VLAN on a trunked ethernet wire can be nonfunctional like that.

I'll soon rip into this at a more detailed level. Have a monitoring switch or two I can use to observe ... something... in the wire. ;)

Derelict

@mrpete It must be something on that VLAN. Blocking multicast. Something.

RobertK 1

Maybe your STP topology is different in that VLAN, so traffic goes on an unexpected path

MrPete

Thanks all for the suggestions. Digging into it...