A virtual router spans a number of physical routing devices. A set of physical ports on one of the physical routing devices is logically represented as a trunk. A respective port priority value is associated with each of those ports, and a device priority value is associated with the physical routing device. If a port in the trunk is out-of-service, then the device priority value can be adjusted by the port priority value associated with the out-of-service port. A corrective action can be implemented if the device priority value fails to satisfy a condition. For example, the physical routing device may failover to another one of the physical routing devices spanned by the virtual router.