VRRP Limitations

This section describes the limitations of VRRP.

Exclusive-IP Zone Support

In each exclusive-IP zone, the VRRP service svc:/network/vrrp/default is enabled automatically when any VRRP router is created in the zone. The VRRP service manages the VRRP router for that specific zone.

However, the support for an exclusive-IP zone is limited because of the following reasons:

• A VNIC cannot be created inside a non-global zone. Therefore, the VRRP VNIC must be created in the global-zone first. Then the VNIC must be assigned to the non-global zone where the VRRP router resides. The VRRP router can then be created and started in the non-global zone by using the vrrpadm command.

• On a single Oracle Solaris system, it is not possible to create two VRRP routers in different zones to participate with the same virtual router. The reason is that Oracle Solaris does not allow you to create two VNICs with the same MAC address.

Inter-operations With Other Network Features

The VRRP service cannot work on an IP network multipathing (IPMP) interface. VRRP requires specific VRRP MAC addresses, but IPMP works completely in the IP layer.

Further, the VRRP virtual IP addresses can only be statically configured and cannot be auto-configured by the two existing auto-configuration tools for IP addresses: in.ndpd for IPv6 auto-configuration and dhcpagent for DHCP configuration. Because the master and the backup VRRP routers (VNICs) share the same MAC address, in.ndpd and dhcpagent can become confused. Eventually, unexpected results can occur. Therefore, IPv6 auto-configuration and DHCP configurations are not supported over VRRP VNICs. If you configure either IPv6 auto-configuration or DHCP over a VRRP VNIC, the attempt to bring up the auto-configured IP address fails, as will the auto-configuration operation.