Technical Tip: Sending messages (logs, SNMP, RADIUS) directly from the HA management interface

[hrahuman_FTNT]

Description

This article describes that when HA-direct is enabled, FortiGate uses the HA management interface to send log messages to FortiAnalyzer and remote syslog servers, sending SNMP traps, access to remote authentication servers (for example, RADIUS, LDAP), and connecting to  FortiSandbox, or FortiCloud.

Scope

FortiGate: logging, management interface.

Solution

Once the HA management interface has been configured, enable HA-direct globally:

config system ha

set ha-direct enable

end

In many cases, HA-direct can also be enabled only for appropriate features, such as SNMP or an LDAP server configuration. For example, in SNMPv3:

config system snmp user

    edit snmpv3-user

        set ha-direct enable

    next

end

Note:

This setting alters the traffic flow. Enabling it may cause timeouts to occur due to an unresponsive FortiGate. This occurs because the response to a request is sent on a different interface where the packet may not be routed back to the requester, resulting in a request timeout.