Configure Active/Active HA

Connect the HA ports to set up a physical connection between the firewalls.
For each use case, the firewalls could be any hardware model; choose the HA3 step that corresponds with your model.
For firewalls with dedicated HA ports, use an Ethernet cable to connect the dedicated HA1 ports and the HA2 ports on peers. Use a crossover cable if the peers are directly connected to each other.
For firewalls without dedicated HA ports, select two data interfaces for the HA2 link and the backup HA1 link. Then, use an Ethernet cable to connect these in-band HA interfaces across both firewalls. Use the management port for the HA1 link and ensure that the management ports can connect to each other across your network.
For HA3:
On PA-7000 Series firewalls, connect the High Speed Chassis Interconnect (HSCI-A) on the first chassis to the HSCI-A on the second chassis, and the HSCI-B on the first chassis to the HSCI-B on the second chassis.
On the PA-5450 firewall, connect the HSCI-A on the first chassis to the HSCI-A on the second chassis, and the HSCI-B on the first chassis to the HSCI-B on the second chassis.
On PA-5200 Series firewalls (which have one HSCI port), connect the HSCI port on the first chassis to the HSCI port on the second chassis. You can also use data ports for HA3 on PA-5200 Series firewalls.
On PA-3200 Series firewalls (which have one HSCI port), connect the HSCI port on the first chassis to the HSCI port on the second chassis.
On any other hardware model, use dataplane interfaces for HA3.
Enable ping on the management port.
Enabling ping allows the management port to exchange heartbeat backup information.
Select
Device
Setup
Interfaces
Management
.
Select
Ping
as a service that is permitted on the interface.
If the firewall does not have dedicated HA ports, set up the data ports to function as HA ports.
For firewalls with dedicated HA ports continue to the next step.
Select
Network
Interfaces
.
Confirm that the link is up on the ports that you want to use.
Select the interface and set
Interface Type
to
HA
.
Set the
Link Speed
and
Link Duplex
settings, as appropriate.
Enable active/active HA and set the group ID.
In
Device
High Availability
General
, edit Setup.
Select
Enable HA
.
Enter a
Group ID
, which must be the same for both firewalls. The firewall uses the Group ID to calculate the virtual MAC address (range is 1-63).
(
Optional
) Enter a
Description
.
For
Mode
, select
Active Active
.
Set the Device ID, enable synchronization, and identify the control link on the peer firewall
In
Device
High Availability
General
, edit Setup.
Select
Device ID
as follows:
When configuring the first peer, set the
Device ID
to
0
.
When configuring the second peer, set the
Device ID
to
1
.
Select
Enable Config Sync
. This setting is required to synchronize the two firewall configurations (enabled by default).
Enter the
Peer HA1 IP Address
, which is the IP address of the HA1 control link on the peer firewall.
(
Optional
) Enter a
Backup Peer HA1 IP Address
, which is the IP address of the backup control link on the peer firewall.
Click
OK
.
Determine whether or not the firewall with the lower Device ID preempts the active-primary firewall upon recovery from a failure.
In
Device
High Availability
General
, edit Election Settings.
Select
Preemptive
to cause the firewall with the lower Device ID to automatically resume active-primary operation after either firewall recovers from a failure. Both firewalls must have
Preemptive
selected for preemption to occur.
Leave
Preemptive
unselected if you want the active-primary role to remain with the current firewall until you manually make the recovered firewall the active-primary firewall.
Enable heartbeat backup if your control link uses a dedicated HA port or an in-band port.
You need not enable heartbeat backup if you are using the management port for the control link.
In
Device
High Availability
General
, edit Election Settings.
Select
Heartbeat Backup
.
To allow the heartbeats to be transmitted between the firewalls, you must verify that the management port across both peers can route to each other.
Enabling heartbeat backup allows you to prevent a split-brain situation. Split brain occurs when the HA1 link goes down, causing the firewall to miss heartbeats, although the firewall is still functioning. In such a situation, each peer believes the other is down and attempts to start services that are running, thereby causing a split brain. Enabling heartbeat backup prevents split brain because redundant heartbeats and hello messages are transmitted over the management port.
(
Optional
) Modify the HA Timers.
By default, the HA timer profile is set to the
Recommended
profile and is suited for most HA deployments.
In
Device
High Availability
General
, edit Election Settings.
Select
Aggressive
to trigger faster failover. Select
Advanced
to define custom values for triggering failover in your setup.
To view the preset value for an individual timer included in a profile, select
Advanced
and click
Load Recommended
or
Load Aggressive
. The preset values for your hardware model will be displayed on screen.
Set up the control link connection.
This example uses an in-band port that is set to interface type HA.
For firewalls that use the management port as the control link, the IP address information is automatically pre-populated.
In
Device
High Availability
HA Communications
, edit Control Link (HA1).
Select the
Port
that you have cabled for use as the HA1 link.
Set the
IPv4/IPv6 Address
and
Netmask
.
If the HA1 interfaces are on separate subnets, enter the IP address of the
Gateway
. Do not add a gateway address if the firewalls are directly connected.
(
Optional
) Enable encryption for the control link connection.
This is typically used to secure the link if the two firewalls are not directly connected, that is if the ports are connected to a switch or a router.
Export the HA key from one firewall and import it into the peer firewall.
Select
Device
Certificate Management
Certificates
.
Select
Export HA key
. Save the HA key to a network location that the peer can access.
On the peer firewall, select
Device
Certificate Management
Certificates
, and select
Import HA key
to browse to the location that you saved the key and import it in to the peer.
In
Device
High Availability
General
, edit the Control Link (HA1).
Select
Encryption Enabled
.
If you enable encryption, after you finish configuring the HA firewalls, you can Refresh HA1 SSH Keys and Configure Key Options.
Set up the backup control link connection.
In
Device
High Availability
HA Communications
, edit Control Link (HA1 Backup).
Select the HA1 backup interface and set the
IPv4/IPv6 Address
and
Netmask
.
PA-3200 Series firewalls don’t support an IPv6 address for the HA1 backup control link; use an IPv4 address.
Set up the data link connection (HA2) and the backup HA2 connection between the firewalls.
In
Device
High Availability
General
, edit Data Link (HA2).
Select the
Port
to use for the data link connection.
Select the
Transport
method. The default is
ethernet
, and will work when the HA pair is connected directly or through a switch. If you need to route the data link traffic through the network, select
IP
or
UDP
as the transport mode.
If you use IP or UDP as the transport method, enter the
IPv4/IPv6 Address
and
Netmask
.
Verify that
Enable Session Synchronization
is selected.
Select
HA2 Keep-alive
to enable monitoring on the HA2 data link between the HA peers. If a failure occurs based on the threshold that is set (default is 10000 ms), the defined action will occur. When an HA2 Keep-alive failure occurs, the system either generates a critical system log message or causes a split dataplane depending on your configuration.
You can configure the HA2 Keep-alive option on both firewalls, or just one firewall in the HA pair. If the option is only enabled on one firewall, only that firewall sends the Keep-alive messages. The other firewall is notified if a failure occurs.
A split dataplane causes the dataplanes of both peers to operate independently while leaving the high-available state as Active-Primary and Active-Secondary. If only one firewall is configured to split dataplane, then split dataplane applies to the other device as well.
Edit the
Data Link (HA2 Backup)
section, select the interface, and add the
IPv4/IPv6 Address
and
Netmask
.
Click
OK
.
Configure the HA3 link for packet forwarding.
In
Device
High Availability
HA Communications
, edit Packet Forwarding.
For
HA3 Interface
, select the interface you want to use to forward packets between active/active HA peers. It must be a dedicated interface capable of Layer 2 transport and set to
Interface Type HA
.
Select
VR Sync
to force synchronization of all virtual routers configured on the HA peers. Select when the virtual router is not configured for dynamic routing protocols. Both peers must be connected to the same next-hop router through a switched network and must use static routing only.
Select
QoS Sync
to synchronize the QoS profile selection on all physical interfaces. Select when both peers have similar link speeds and require the same QoS profiles on all physical interfaces. This setting affects the synchronization of QoS settings on the
Network
tab. QoS policy is synchronized regardless of this setting.
(
Optional
) Modify the Tentative Hold time.
In
Device
High Availability
HA Communications
, edit Packet Forwarding.
For
Tentative Hold Time (sec)
, enter the number of seconds that a firewall stays in Tentative state after it recovers post-failure (range is 10-600, default is 60).
Configure Session Owner and Session Setup.
In
Device
High Availability
HA Communications
, edit Packet Forwarding.
For
Session Owner Selection
, select one of the following:
First Packet
—The firewall that receives the first packet of a new session is the session owner (recommended setting). This setting minimizes traffic across HA3 and load shares traffic across peers.
Primary Device
—The firewall that is in active-primary state is the session owner.
For
Session Setup
, select one of the following:
IP Modulo
—The firewall performs an XOR operation on the source and destination IP addresses from the packet and based on the result, the firewall chooses which HA peer will set up the session.
Primary Device
—The active-primary firewall sets up all sessions.
First Packet
—The firewall that receives the first packet of a new session performs session setup (recommended setting).
Start with First Packet for Session Owner and Session Setup, and then based on load distribution, you can change to one of the other options.
IP Hash
—The firewall uses a hash of either the source IP address or a combination of the source and destination IP addresses to distribute session setup responsibilities.
Click
OK
.
Configure an HA virtual address.
You need a virtual address to use a Floating IP Address and Virtual MAC Address or ARP Load-Sharing.
In
Device
High Availability
Active/Active Config
,
Add
a Virtual Address.
Enter or select an
Interface
.
Select the
IPv4
or
IPv6
tab and click
Add
.
Enter an
IPv4 Address
or
IPv6 Address
.
For
Type
:
Select
Floating
to configure the virtual IP address to be a floating IP address.
Select
ARP Load Sharing
to configure the virtual IP address to be a shared IP address and skip to Configure ARP Load-Sharing.
Configure the floating IP address.
Do not select
Floating IP bound to the Active-Primary device
unless you want the active/active HA pair to behave like an active/passive HA pair.
For
Device 0 Priority
and
Device 1 Priority
, enter a priority for the firewall configured with Device ID 0 and Device ID 1, respectively. The relative priorities determine which peer owns the floating IP address you just configured (range is 0-255). The firewall with the lowest priority value (highest priority) owns the floating IP address.
Select
Failover address if link state is down
to cause the firewall to use the failover address when the link state on the interface is down.
Click
OK
.
Configure ARP Load-Sharing.
The device selection algorithm determines which HA firewall responds to the ARP requests to provide load sharing.
For
Device Selection Algorithm
, select one of the following:
IP Modulo
—The firewall that will respond to ARP requests is based on the parity of the ARP requester's IP address.
IP Hash
—The firewall that will respond to ARP requests is based on a hash of the ARP requester's IP address.
Click
OK
.
Define HA Failover Conditions.
Commit
the configuration.