Introduction to FortiGate-6000 FGCP HA
FortiGate-6000 supports active-passive FortiGate Clustering Protocol (FGCP) HA between two (and only two) identical FortiGate-6000s. You can configure FortiGate-6000 HA in much the same way as any FortiGate HA setup except that only active-passive HA is supported, and even though FortiGate-6000s are configured with VDOMS, virtual clustering is not supported.
You must use the 10Gbit HA1 and HA2 interfaces for HA heartbeat communication. The recommended HA heartbeat configuration is to use a cable to directly the HA1 interfaces of each FortiGate-6000 and another cable to directly connect the HA2 interfaces of each FortiGate-6000.
You can use switches to connect the HA heartbeat interfaces. Heartbeat packets are VLAN-tagged and you can configure the VLANs used. If you are using switches you must configure the switch interfaces in trunk mode and the switches must allow the VLAN-tagged packets.
As part of the FortiGate-6000 HA configuration, you assign each of the FortiGate-6000s in the HA cluster a chassis ID of 1 or 2. The chassis IDs just allow you to identify individual FortiGate-6000s and do not influence primary unit selection.
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If both FortiGate-6000s in a cluster are configured with the same chassis ID, when the FortiGate-6000s negotiate to form a cluster, the device with the lowest serial number will be shut down. The other device will begin operating as a standalone FortiGate-6000 in HA mode. You can resolve this chassis ID conflict by restarting the shut down FortiGate-6000 and configuring the FortiGate-6000s in the cluster with different chassis IDs. Once both FortiGate-6000s are operating in HA mode with different chassis IDs, they will negotiate to form a cluster, and if their chassis IDs are different, the cluster will begin to operate normally. |
Example FortiGate-6000 HA configuration
In a FortiGate-6000 FGCP HA configuration, the primary (or master) FortiGate-6000 processes all traffic. The backup FortiGate-6000 operates in hot standby mode. The FGCP synchronizes the configuration, active sessions, routing information, and so on to the backup FortiGate-6000. If the primary FortiGate-6000 fails, traffic automatically fails over to the backup.
The FGCP selects the primary FortiGate-6000 based on standard FGCP primary unit selection:
- Connected monitored interfaces
- Age
- Device Priority
- Serial Number
In most cases and with default settings, if everything is connected and operating normally, the FortiGate-6000 with the highest serial number becomes the primary FortiGate-6000. You can set the device priority higher on one of the FortiGate-6000s if you want it to become the primary FortiGate-6000. You can also enable override along with setting a higher device priority to make sure the same FortiGate-6000 always becomes the primary FortiGate-6000.