HA heartbeat using fibre SFP ports

Forum|Forum|11 years ago
August 18, 2015
4 replies
13475 views

Hello

For HA heartbeat Fortinet documentation advises to use copper ports. E.g. dmz and wan2

http://docs-legacy.fortinet.com/cb/html/index.html#page/FOS_Cookbook/Install_advanced/cb_install-ha.html

We only have fibre patch panels between the racks where the firewalls will be placed. We have Fortigates 2 x 600Cs

Can anybody think on any reason why I should not use the fibre SFP ports for HA heartbeats?

Thanks,

Best answer by discoscott

One concern I would have is that its likely the fibre run between your firewalls are through a single 6-12+ core fibre run. Fortinet suggest using 2 ports for HA heartbeat for redundancy - if the 6-12+ core fibre run is cut you will lose both heartbeats.

My preference would be to put both HA firewalls within 5-10 metres of each other and use the fibre to patch the other buildings network into the HA Pair.

discoscottAnswer

New Member

One concern I would have is that its likely the fibre run between your firewalls are through a single 6-12+ core fibre run. Fortinet suggest using 2 ports for HA heartbeat for redundancy - if the 6-12+ core fibre run is cut you will lose both heartbeats.

My preference would be to put both HA firewalls within 5-10 metres of each other and use the fibre to patch the other buildings network into the HA Pair.

emnoc

New Member

That's doable and no reason why you can't us a fiber port+transceiver. Some time this is the only mean if the cluster exceed the distance of copper

e.g

FW1 and FW2 over 300m away or on different floor or different buildings

vjoshi_FTNT

Staff

Hello,

I have seen few setups using the fiber ports for the HA heartbeat interfaces without any issues

I don't see any specific reason why they should not be and also the document doesn't say anything about it. By saying the a regular ethernet cable, it covers all the units (including the low end models), may be, that is the reason the document points the regular ethernet cable

victorcreedAuthor

New Member

Thank you all, indeed it worked without issues.

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