Advanced Ha Options; Selecting A Fortigate Unit To A Permanent Primary Unit - Fortinet FortiGate 400 Installation & Configuration Manual

High availability

Advanced HA options

Selecting a FortiGate unit to a permanent primary unit

FortiGate-400 Installation and Configuration Guide
The following advanced HA options are available from the FortiGate CLI:
• Selecting a FortiGate unit to a permanent primary unit
• Configuring weighted-round-robin weights
In a typical FortiGate cluster configuration, the primary unit selection process is
automatic. The primary unit can be different each time the cluster starts up. In addition
the unit functioning as the primary unit can change from time to time (for example, if
the current primary unit restarts, one of the other units in the cluster replaces it as the
primary unit).
In some situations, you may want to control which unit becomes the primary unit. You
can configure a FortiGate unit to become the permanent primary unit by changing the
priority of this unit and configuring it to override any other primary unit.
When FortiGates units in a cluster are negotiating to be the primary unit, the one with
the lowest priority always becomes the primary unit. If two units have the same
priority, the standard negotiation process is used to select the primary unit.
To configure a FortiGate unit to be the permanent primary unit in an HA cluster:
1 Connect to the CLI of the permanent primary FortiGate unit.
2 Set the priority of the permanent primary unit. Enter:
set system ha priority <priority_int>
Where <priority_int> is the priority to set for the permanent primary unit. The unit
with the lowest priority becomes the primary unit. The default priority is 128. Set the
priority of the permanent primary unit to a number lower than 128.
For example, to set the priority of the permanent primary unit to 10, enter the
command:
set system ha priority 10
3 Make sure the priorities of all of the other units in the cluster are higher than the
priority of the permanent primary unit.
The command get system ha mode displays the current priority of the FortiGate
unit that you are connected to.
4 Configure the permanent primary unit to override an existing primary unit when it joins
the cluster. Use the following command to configure primary unit override:
set system ha override enable
Enable override so the that the permanent primary unit will always override any other
primary unit. For example, if the permanent primary unit shuts down, one of the other
units in the cluster replaces it as the primary unit. When the permanent primary unit is
restarted, it can become the primary unit again only if override is enabled.
Advanced HA options
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