Enquiries on Fortigate 3040B cluster feature

[contumacysg]

Hi All, I' m a 100% newbie of Fortigate products, recently my company ordered two 3040B FW for a big project, I' m now reading the FortiGate Cookbook to learn this product from scratch. I have some enquries on Fortigate 3040B' s cluster feature: 1. The Cookbook' s content is based on 100D , not 3040B, what the Cookbook said is that on 100D, there are two special interface named " HA1" and " HA2" which are dedicated for cluster (HA) connection. However, I don' t see the " HA1" and " HA2" interface on 3040B box, all I can see is two RJ-45 interface named " Managemet 1" and " Management 2" and the rest interfaces are all SFP+ slots, so my question is: what' s the HA interface on 3040B for the cluster connection? If there' s no dedicated HA interface like 100D, then how do we define the HA interface? Thru the Web GUI? 2. Do I need to configure any IP address on the HA interface? 3. VRRP is another way to achieve HA, if I have already configured Active-Passive clustering on these two 3040B, it' s IMPOSSIBLE for me to add VRRP to them because the two 3040B boxes already have identical configuration because of the synchronization on the config, am I correct?

[Istvan_Takacs_FTNT]

1. you can just pick 2 interfaces and use them for HA sync and HA talk. My suggestion is to use one of the mgmt one that' s a 100 Mb interface, don' t waste the 10 Gb ports. 2. no (maybe for testing if the cluster can' t form for some reason. you could check connectivity that way, but than you can remove the IPs) 3. no need to use VRRP for HA. Only if you want to use a 3rd party device with the FGT for failover. BTW, you are correct.

[contumacysg]

Excellent! Thanks for the explanations Takacs, much appreciate that!