Bird and keepalived.

[Mike Neo]

Hi all,

I’m looking for best practices and design recommendations for using
Keepalived (VRRP) in a setup with two BIRD-based routers running iBGP
between each other.

Setup overview
- Two routers (R1 and R2), both running BIRD based on debian repo
- Direct interconnection via eno1 (1GE Base-T) used for iBGP session
- Each router has its own uplink and independent eBGP session
- There is a single IX service currently connected to R1
- Goal: ensure failover to R2 (via Keepalived/VRRP) if R1 goes down

Questions

1. VRRP traffic design
What is the recommended approach for VRRP packets in this kind of setup?
- Should VRRP run over a dedicated VLAN on the inter-router link (eno1)?
- Or is it better to run VRRP on the same interface where the VIP is
configured (e.g., gateway interface for downstream hosts), possibly using a
separate VLAN there?

I’m trying to understand what is considered cleaner and more robust in
production environments.

2. Track scripts – best practices
What are the best practices when using track_script in Keepalived?
- What should be monitored in a BGP/BIRD context?
- BGP session state?
- Reachability (e.g., upstream via ping)?
- Interface/link state?
- IX availability?
- How do you typically avoid false positives / flapping?
- Any recommended patterns for integrating BIRD state with Keepalived?

3. Failover strategy for IX service
Given that:
- Only R1 is physically connected to the IX
- Both routers participate in BGP and exchange routes via iBGP

What is the recommended way to ensure that:
• Traffic and VIP failover cleanly to R2
• And ideally, the IX connectivity (logically) follows to R2 during failure?

Is this typically handled purely via VRRP + routing changes, or are there
additional mechanisms commonly used?

Any real-world examples, configuration snippets, or design insights would
be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
Mike
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