Methods and systems for routing application traffic to an operable system manager are provided. In particular, an arbiter application is provided to identify a currently active system manager. The arbiter application provides an address for the active system manager to a routing node. Applications send communications to the active system manager by associating such communications with a virtual system manager address. Such communications are delivered to the routing node, which associates the actual address for the currently active system manager with the communication. The communications are then delivered to the active system manager using the actual address.