VRRP / HA Readiness Checklist

Checklist discipline. Every item is meant to be answered yes / no with evidence. Items marked critical are non-negotiable; items marked warn are judgement calls; items marked info are baseline expectations.

Items

• VHID consistent across the pair (severity: info)
• Priority and preemption policy documented (severity: info)
• Tracking configured on upstream / WAN interface (severity: critical)
• Advertise interval aligned with the design (severity: info)
• Virtual IP on the right subnet (severity: info)
• L2 path between the pair is verified (severity: critical)
• Stateful firewall limitation documented (severity: warn)
• VRRP state monitored on both routers (severity: info)
• Failover tested by forcing a failure (severity: warn)
• Both-MASTER scenario tested for false-positive (severity: warn)

Severity legend

• info: baseline expectation
• warn: judgement call; production-grade depends on context
• critical: non-negotiable; a missed critical item is a release blocker

Evidence retention

The completed checklist is evidence for the change ticket, the audit, and the post-incident review. Store it where it can be recovered if the router is lost.