Failover protection

FortiGate 7000E HA supports failover protection to provide FortiOS services even when one of the FortiGate 7000Es encounters a problem that would result in partial or complete loss of connectivity or reduced performance for a standalone FortiGate 7000E. This failover protection provides a backup mechanism that can be used to reduce the risk of unexpected downtime, especially in a mission-critical environment.

To achieve failover protection in a FortiGate 7000E cluster, one of the FortiGate 7000Es functions as the primary, processing traffic and the other as the secondary, operating in an active stand-by mode. The cluster IP addresses and HA virtual MAC addresses are associated with the interfaces of the primary. All traffic directed at the cluster is actually sent to and processed by the primary.

While the cluster is functioning, the primary FortiGate 7000E functions as the FortiGate network security device for the networks that it is connected to. In addition, the primary FortiGate 7000E and the secondary FortiGate 7000E use the HA heartbeat to keep in constant communication. The secondary FortiGate 7000E reports its status to the primary FortiGate 7000E and receives and stores connection and state table updates from the primary FortiGate 7000E.

FortiGate 7000E HA supports four kinds of failover protection:

• Device failure protection automatically replaces a failed device and restarts traffic flow with minimal impact on the network.
• FIM failure protection makes sure that traffic is processed by the FortiGate 7000E with the most operating FIMs.
• Link failure protection maintains traffic flow if a link fails.
• FPM failure protection makes sure that traffic is processed by the FortiGate 7000E with the most operating FPMs.
• Session failure protection resumes communication sessions with minimal loss of data if a device, module, or link failure occurs.