In Figure 2, clients that connect to IP address M receive Rendezvous service from virtual router A1 of P-7500 A. If P-7500 A fails, those clients reconnect to IP address M, and receive service from the redundant virtual router B2 (which serves the backup role on P-7500 B).
The arrangement in Figure 2 is called an
active-active configuration, because under ordinary circumstances the two primaries are both active simultaneously—each serving its own set of clients. (Meanwhile, both backups are inactive.) In a failover situation, the virtual router in the backup role becomes active, replacing the failed primary.
In Figure 2, the configuration of each virtual router must be identical with its diagonal opposite (except for its virtual router ID). More generally, in each pair of P-7500s configured for redundancy, the following two conditions must both hold: