VRRP / Keepalived (pihole VMs)

[Soogs]

Hello
was trying to set up a third PiHole for some redundancy but have been recommended to use VRRP and Keepalived to failover the machines running PiHole which is perfect for my needs.

I have successfully set up the failover but only the backup pihole works for pihole itself.

set up as follows

Pi4VM-A BACKUP 192.168.1.7 (this is actually the main pihole in the failover. its on an older slower machine that is running a file/Plex server so is on 24/7ish)
Pi4VM-B MASTER 192.168.1.4 (this is my main rig, want to have the second PiHole running from this rig when it's powered on)

Virtual IP = 192.168.1.8

Failover works fine in the sense that backup will take over if the master goes down.

the issue I'm having is that the Master VM does not do anything as far as Pihole is concerned.
pihole is up and running but it is not blocking anything. (i know pihole is up and running as the 2 VMs have a different theme and different block count)

PiHole works fine on the Backup machine.

vrrp_instance pi1 {
    state MASTER
    interface eth0
    virtual_router_id 101
    priority 200
    authentication {
        auth_type PASS
        auth_pass 1234
    }
    virtual_ipaddress {
        192.168.1.8
    }
}

vrrp_instance pi2 {
    state BACKUP
    interface eth0
    virtual_router_id 101
    priority 100
    authentication {
        auth_type PASS
        auth_pass 1234
    }
    virtual_ipaddress {
        192.168.1.8
    }
}

the only real difference between the 2 VMs is that one runs on VirtualBox and the other on VM ware player.

they both work independently before the failover setup.

Any ideas why one isnt working in the failover?

cheers in advance