HA system requirements

• Appliances must have the same hardware model and same firmware version.
• Redundant network topology: if an active node fails, physical network cabling and routes must be able to redirect traffic to the other member nodes.
• At least one physical port on both HA appliances to be used for heartbeat and data traffic between cluster members. For active-passive failover pairs, you can connect the ports directly via a crossover cable. For active-active clusters with more than two members, you can connect the nodes via the same Layer 2 switch.
• Heartbeat and synchronization traffic between cluster nodes occur over the physical network ports that you designate. If switches are used to connect the nodes, the interfaces must be reachable by Layer 2 multicast.
• Each appliance must be licensed. If using FortiADC-VM, the license must be paid; trial licenses will not function.

FortiADC-VM supports HA. However, if you do not want to use the native HA, you can use your hypervisor or VM environment manager to install your virtual appliances over a hardware cluster to improve availability. For example, VMware clusters can use vMotion or VMware HA.