HA Primary Selection and Traffic Distribution Enhancements (8.0.3)

FortiWeb 8.0.3 introduces updates to the HA primary selection process and traffic distribution behavior, enabling more accurate failover decisions and improved stability in Active-Active High-Volume (AAH) mode. These enhancements help ensure that the most capable and healthy unit becomes active, while giving administrators finer control over node behavior during normal operations or troubleshooting.

Enhancements

• Disk state added to primary selection criteria

  FortiWeb now evaluates the health of the system disk as a key factor when determining the primary unit. A device without disk errors is preferred over one reporting disk issues.

  Updated evaluation order:

  Failover → Disk State → Available Ports → Uptime → Device Priority → Serial Number

• New Preempt option for AAH traffic distribution

  Administrators can now choose whether node-order or uptime determines the active node:

  • Preempt enabled (default): node-order selects the active unit.

  • Preempt disabled: uptime becomes the deciding factor (after port availability), reducing unnecessary role transitions.

• Option to force a node into standby (AAH mode)

  A new CLI command allows temporarily placing a unit into standby for maintenance, verification, or debugging. The override resets automatically on reboot.

Configuration Updates

FortiWeb 8.0.3 includes updates to HA behavior for all deployment modes, along with new configuration options specific to Active-Active High-Volume (AAH) clusters.

New Preempt option in Traffic Distribution

Under System > High Availability > Settings, the Traffic Distribution configuration now includes the Preempt option.

• Enable: node-order determines which unit becomes active.

• Disable: uptime becomes the deciding factor (after port availability), helping stabilize cluster behavior when units restart.

New CLI-only command to temporarily force active/standby

execute ha traffic-dist {active | standby | status}

• active — promote this unit to active

• standby — force the unit not to process traffic

• status — show current traffic-distribution state

This override resets after reboot.