topic Active passive to active active mode in General Topics

Active passive to active active mode

peterpan13888 — Mon, 16 Sep 2013 02:46:55 GMT

I have a pair of PA3020 in active-passive mode within the same datacenter pointing to the same ISP. We are planning to move the standby firewall to the new redundancy site and enable active-active mode pointing to a new redundant ISP. The 2 firewalls will be connected by dark fiber within a few kilometers. What are the best practices and steps to break HA active-passive mode and re-enable active-active mode? What are the potential challenges and how to avoid them (if possible)?

Thanks!

Peter Man

Re: Active passive to active active mode

hshah — Mon, 16 Sep 2013 03:14:01 GMT

Hi peterpan13888,

When you change active/passive configuration to active/active configuration, firewall looses active/passive configuration. Basically its new active/active failover configuration.

I would suggest suspend passive unit first.

Then configure existing active unit in active/active configuration.

Then change configuration for suspended firewall to active/active configuration, and make it functional again.

I would advice to do this in downtime.

Regards,

Hardik Shah

Re: Active passive to active active mode

VinceM — Mon, 16 Sep 2013 10:06:16 GMT

Hi Peter,

Before that, keep in mind that the only (major) reason for configuring activ activ is asyméetric routing. Else .... exept pleasure to configure it ... It's more difficult to configure, more difficult to maintain, more difficult to troubleshoot .... then keep simple is always the best solution. Not sure you will make asymetric routing between your datacanter

Ask you the question: Do you really need it ?? Does it make sense for me ??

Hope help

Re: Active passive to active active mode

peterpan13888 — Tue, 17 Sep 2013 18:02:55 GMT

Totally agree. I thought active active mode is the only option in this scenario with 2 datacenters (connected by dark fibre ring) and 2 ISPs?

Re: Active passive to active active mode

indup089 — Thu, 19 Sep 2013 13:29:00 GMT

Hi Peter,

if you are able to run a layer2-vlan "before" and "after" the PAN even through the distributed datacenter design, active-passiv is still possible.

Best regards!