About Layer 3 Hardware Forwarding in a Cluster

In a cluster, Layer 3 hardware forwarding takes place on both nodes running as a VRRP pair (see also the next sections) even if the local VRRP interface is in standby. 

In symmetry of routing each node is expected to forward traffic in hardware on behalf of the peer for any packets destined to the VRRP virtual IP address. This can be achieved by synchronizing L3 entries, L3 adjacencies (vPorts) and vRouter state between the two peers.

For single-homed L3 interfaces, instead, nodes may act independently and may even have an L3 adjacency over the cluster link for failover purposes.