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dqnam277
dqnam277
New Member
February 1, 2026
Question

About IP heartbeat

  • February 1, 2026
  • 1 reply
  • 92 views

Hi everyone,

I'm preparing to deploy a FortiVM cluster for my customer and want to use as few subnets as possible. Therefore, I'd like to ask if I can use port 1 for both MGMT and Unicast Heartbeat. I'm trying to deploy it on my test environment, but the synchronization process is taking too long and I think it's not feasible.

1 reply

magliano
Staff
magliano
Staff
February 1, 2026

Hi,

 

Using the same interface for management traffic and unicast heartbeat is not recommended.

 

Sharing the interface can cause synchronization delays or instability, especially under load, since heartbeat traffic is time-sensitive. This usually explains the long sync times you are seeing.

 

Best practice is to dedicate a separate interface for HA heartbeat traffic, even if the goal is to reduce the number of subnets. This ensures proper HA synchronization and predictable failover behavior.

 

https://community.fortinet.com/t5/FortiGate/Technical-Tip-Best-practices-for-Heartbeat-interfaces-in-FGCP/ta-p/192732

 

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