Cisco HSRP question 6500's on ISO Version 12.2(18)SXF11.

I've got two 6500's on ISO Version 12.2(18)SXF11.
I have 7 vlan's defined on each with HSRP between the two.  There is one cat6 cable connecting them together.
When I bring the systems up, the HSRP looks great with 6500-A being active for all the VLANS as designed.

I have active hosts plugged into switch ports on vlans 2, 4, and 9.  The cross-connect ports are set up as trunks.  I will have hosts on the other vlans on down-stream switches (with uplinks to each unit for redundancy).  There are no connections to those downstream switches yet - that's to be done.

I'm doing failover tests now and I've run into an issue that confuses me.

When I turn off 6500-B, and on 6500-A I would expect everything to stay just fine with pings from a laptop on VLAN2 to each of the HSRP IP's for the other VLANS to stay active.  Instead, I have found that VLAN's with no active hosts start failing.
Logs show the HSRP going from Active to Init:
 Apr 27 18:15:01: %STANDBY-6-STATECHANGE: Vlan3 Group 3 state Active -> Init The VLAN interface shows as down/down.
They never recover until I reboot 6500-B.  Once 6500-B is back up, all recover to normal state.

The same thing happens on both 6500's if I remove the cross connect cable between the two.

I proved my 'no active hosts' theory by adding a host on one of the VLAN's that fail, and when I do the test again that VLAN stays up.

I've included config bits for one of the vlans below.  The rest are all identical with just IP's and numbers changing.

I've also include a show stand br output from A when B is turned off.

Any clues/thoughts/ideas?  I'm worried that if hosts for the other VLANS are only on downstream switches and this behavior happens then, I have no real routing redundancy...

Thanks for any input.


6500-A:
interface Vlan6
 description IuPS Vlan
 ip address 10.10.6.1 255.255.255.0
 no ip redirects
 standby 6 ip 10.10.6.3
 standby 6 timers 5 15
 standby 6 priority 110
 standby 6 preempt
 standby 6 authentication provo2
!

6500-B:
interface Vlan6
 description IuPS Vlan
 ip address 10.10.6.2 255.255.255.0
 no ip redirects
 standby 6 ip 10.10.6.3
 standby 6 timers 5 15
 standby 6 priority 90
 standby 6 authentication provo2
!

Happy state:
6500-A#show stand br
                     P indicates configured to preempt.
                     |
Interface   Grp Prio P State    Active addr     Standby addr    Group addr    
Vl2         2   110  P Active   local           10.10.2.2       10.10.2.3      
Vl3         3   110  P Active   local           10.10.3.2       10.10.3.3      
Vl4         4   110  P Active   local           10.10.4.2       10.10.4.3      
Vl5         5   110  P Active   local           10.10.5.2       10.10.5.3      
Vl6         6   110  P Active   local           10.10.6.2       10.10.6.3      
Vl7         7   110  P Active   local           10.10.7.2       10.10.7.3      
Vl9         9   110  P Active   local           10.10.9.2       10.10.9.3      

6500-B-turned-off state (hosts on VLANS 2,4,6,9 plugged in to 6500-A):
6500-A#show stand br
                     P indicates configured to preempt.
                     |
Interface   Grp Prio P State    Active addr     Standby addr    Group addr    
Vl2         2   110  P Active   local           10.10.2.2       10.10.2.3      
Vl3         3   110  P Init     unknown         unknown         10.10.3.3      
Vl4         4   110  P Active   local           10.10.4.2       10.10.4.3      
Vl5         5   110  P Init     unknown         unknown         10.10.5.3      
Vl6         6   110  P Active   local           10.10.6.2       10.10.6.3      
Vl7         7   110  P Init     unknown         unknown         10.10.7.3      
Vl9         9   110  P Active   local           10.10.9.2       10.10.9.3

Thanks.

6500-a.conf.txt
6500-b.conf.txt