To use this feature, you must register the Dell SonicWALL appliances on MySonicWALL as Associated Products. For further information, see Registering and Associating Appliances on MySonicWALL .
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Primary - Describes the principal hardware unit itself. The Primary identifier is a manual designation and is not subject to conditional changes. Under normal operating conditions, the Primary hardware unit operates in an Active role.
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Secondary (Backup) - Describes the subordinate hardware unit itself. The Secondary identifier is a relational designation and is assumed by a unit when paired with a Primary unit. Under normal operating conditions, the Secondary unit operates in a Standby mode. Upon failure of the Primary unit, the Secondary unit assumes the Active role.
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Active - Describes the operative condition of a hardware unit. The Active identifier is a logical role that can be assumed by either a Primary or Secondary hardware unit.
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Standby (Idle) - Describes the passive condition of a hardware unit. The Standby identifier is a logical role that can be assumed by either a Primary or Secondary hardware unit. The Standby unit assumes the Active role upon a determinable failure of the Active unit.
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Failover - Describes the actual process in which the Standby unit assumes the Active role following a qualified failure of the Active unit. Qualification of failure is achieved by various configurable physical and logical monitoring facilities described throughout the Task List section.
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Preempt - Applies to a post-failover condition in which the Primary unit has failed, and the Secondary unit has assumed the Active role. Enabling Preempt causes the Primary unit to seize the Active role from the Secondary after the Primary has been restored to a verified operational state.
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High Availability has several operation modes, which can be selected on the High Availability > Settings page:
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None—Selecting None activates a standard high availability configuration and hardware failover functionality, with the option of enabling Stateful HA and Active/Active DPI.
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Active/Standby—Active/Standby mode provides basic high availability with the configuration of two identical firewalls as a High Availability Pair. The Active unit handles all traffic, while the Standby unit shares its configuration settings and can take over at any time to provide continuous network connectivity if the Active unit stops working.
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Active/Active DPI—The Active/Active Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) mode can be used along with the Active/Standby mode. When Active/Active DPI mode is enabled, the processor intensive DPI services, such as Intrusion Prevention (IPS), Gateway Anti-Virus (GAV), and Anti-Spyware are processed on the standby firewall, while other services, such as firewall, NAT, and other types of traffic are processed on the Active firewall concurrently.
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Active/Active Clustering—In this mode, multiple firewalls are grouped together as cluster nodes, with multiple Active units processing traffic (as multiple gateways), doing DPI and sharing the network load. Each cluster node consists of two units acting as a Stateful HA pair. Active/Active Clustering provides Stateful Failover support in addition to load-sharing. Optionally, each cluster node can also consist of a single unit, in which case Stateful Failover and Active/Active DPI are not available.
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Active/Active DPI Clustering—This mode allows for the configuration of up to four HA cluster nodes for failover and load sharing, where the nodes load balance the application of DPI security services to network traffic. This mode can be enabled for additional performance gain, utilizing the standby units in each cluster node.
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On the High Availability > Monitoring page, you can configure both physical and logical interface monitoring. By enabling physical interface monitoring, you enable link detection for the designated HA interfaces. The link is sensed at the physical layer to determine link viability. Logical monitoring involves configuring the SonicWALL to monitor a reliable device on one or more of the connected networks. Failure to periodically communicate with the device by the Active unit in the HA Pair will trigger a failover to the Standby unit. If neither unit in the HA Pair can connect to the device, no action will be taken.
The management IP address of the Secondary/Standby unit is used to allow license synchronization with the Dell SonicWALL licensing server, which handles licensing on a per-appliance basis (not per-HA Pair). Even if the Secondary unit was already registered on MySonicWALL before creating the HA association, you must use the link on the System > Licenses page to connect to the Dell SonicWALL server while accessing the Secondary appliance through its management IP address.
The configuration tasks on the High Availability > Monitoring page are performed on the Primary unit and then are automatically synchronized to the Secondary.