topic Re: Global Protect VPN with 2 ISP (Active Active) in GlobalProtect Discussions

Global Protect VPN with 2 ISP (Active Active)

Ustapon — Sat, 12 Mar 2022 16:31:11 GMT

Hi Guys,

My customer has GSLB ( 1 domain 2 ip address).

Example. nslookup vpn.test.com

Name: vpn.test.com
Addresses: 10.10.10.254
20.20.20.254

Is it possible to config GlobalProtect VPN with 2 ISP, 2 Portals, 2 Gateways but same certificate profile and same External Gateway name? But when client connect to each Gateway they will recieve seperate vpn ip pool.

Re: Global Protect VPN with 2 ISP (Active Active)

slp-security — Sun, 13 Mar 2022 16:20:46 GMT

Hi,

I faced this issue last year. Basically, GP doesn't support 2 IPs for the same FQDN... For exemple, if the first gateway is done, GP simply returns error message like 'cannot connect to gateway' and never tries to reach the second (alive) one...

Re: Global Protect VPN with 2 ISP (Active Active)

Mick_Ball — Sun, 13 Mar 2022 17:07:38 GMT

You can just have 1 portal with 2 gateways…. If the portal address is unavailable then the the GP client will used a cached portal from the last known connection. It will then try both gateways and connect to the fastest responder.. ( depending on GW priority setting). This will of course be an issue if it’s a first time connection as there will be no local cached portal. Is this for load balancing or resilience?

Re: Global Protect VPN with 2 ISP (Active Active)

Ustapon — Mon, 14 Mar 2022 04:02:19 GMT

Some user found error like your explain.

Re: Global Protect VPN with 2 ISP (Active Active)

Ustapon — Mon, 14 Mar 2022 04:31:30 GMT

If we have 1 portal. About the first time users, How they know the secondary gw ?

Re: Global Protect VPN with 2 ISP (Active Active)

Mick_Ball — Mon, 14 Mar 2022 09:58:24 GMT

Yes that would be a problem as mentioned in my previous post. You could change DNS to point to a different portal address but that will take time to propagate to users.

you could also use a wildcard certificate and give users the choice of 2 portals. Certificate = *.vpn.test.com, portal 1 = p1.vpn.test.com and portal 2 =p2.vpn.test.com

Re: Global Protect VPN with 2 ISP (Active Active)

Ustapon — Mon, 14 Mar 2022 15:48:18 GMT

Thank you for your suggestion. Let me discuss with my customer first.

Re: Global Protect VPN with 2 ISP (Active Active)

TomYoung — Mon, 14 Mar 2022 22:22:50 GMT

Hi @Ustapon ,

You should be able to configure the NGFW with 2 portals, 2 gateways, and 1 certificate. I configured 1 portal with 2 gateways and 1 certificate for a customer using this method -> https://knowledgebase.paloaltonetworks.com/KCSArticleDetail?id=kA10g000000ClUhCAK. This technique is not well known. The FQDN is the same, but the port numbers are different. A NAT rule is used to NAT traffic to the different gateway IP. This may not be needed if you have 2 portals.

This guys says it is possible to have 2 GP portals on the same appliance -> https://live.paloaltonetworks.com/t5/general-topics/global-protect-with-multiple-portals/td-p/49657. Again, that doesn't seem to be documented.

If you have two separate portals (one for each ISP) that only forward traffic to one gateway (on the same ISP) then I don't see why it wouldn't work. They should act independently without a conflict in FQDN or certificate.

It would be cool if you could test it and let us know. If you have ECMP, you need to enable symmetric return.

Thanks,

Tom

PS A more standard way of accomplishing this redundancy is to use a public loopback address that is advertised to both ISPs. Then you only need to configure 1 portal and 1 gateway. Again, configure symmetric return is ECMP is enabled.