Technical Tip: HA device with lower priority may become the Primary unit at installation

Description

This article describes that HA device with lower priority may become the Primary unit upon installation.

Scope

FortiGate v2.80.

Solution

Inserting a Secondary device in a running HA cluster, may cause it to become the Primary unit, even if it has a lower priority.This may cause the running configuration file on the master to be overwritten with the 'unconfigured' one on the Secondary unit.

This can occur when the inserted Secondary unit was not powered off prior to connecting the interfaces together.

It is crucial that any devices that are added to a cluster, be initially powered off, connected, and then powered on.The Primary unit will then properly recognize the addition of a new FortiGate unit and will take into consideration that unit's HA Priority value.