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Palo Alto NGFW lab 20 of 30

High availability: active/passive with link and path monitoring

Pair two VM-Series firewalls in active/passive HA: HA1 over the management ports, HA2 on a dedicated data link, priorities and preemption, configuration and session synchronisation, link and path monitoring. Then fail over by suspending the active member and watch the passive one carry the depot's traffic.

Run this lab

It needs Standard: its 4 nodes are set to 6 vCPU and 12,800 MB in total.

In your workspace: Shared, then Palo Alto NGFW PAN-OS 11 guided labs, then 20 - High availability - active-passive with link and path monitoring

Run it on Standard from £5 a day

The free demo can’t run it: it has 6 vCPU and 8 GB, and this lab’s nodes need 6 vCPU and 12,800 MB together. Every lab plan includes every guided lab.

Level
Advanced
Time
About 60 minutes
Nodes need
6 vCPU, 12,800 MB
Smallest plan
Standard

The scenario

The Leeds depot can't afford a firewall outage. A second VM-Series, FW-B, has been cabled next to FW-A:

  • their data ports share the Inside and Outside segments;
  • their management ports are on the Inside segment;
  • a cable joins their ethernet1/3 ports.

FW-A has the depot's working configuration. FW-B has only its management settings. Build an active/passive pair:

  • FW-A is preferred while healthy.
  • FW-B takes over automatically if FW-A loses a data link, loses its path to the ISP, or is taken out of service.

Before you start. Start all the nodes. Both firewalls take 6-8 minutes to boot and come up with this lab's starting configuration already loaded. Wait until each firewall's console shows its own name (FW-A login:, FW-B login:), then log in as admin / Lab-Access-1. Until the management plane is ready it answers Login incorrect, even with the right password. The Linux hosts are ready within seconds.

What you’ll practise

  • Explain HA1 and HA2, active/passive versus active/active, and what is and isn't synchronised
  • Configure HA with device priority, preemption and the HA links
  • Synchronise the configuration and verify the HA state
  • Add link monitoring and path monitoring
  • Fail over with suspend and recover, and read the HA status and logs

The tasks

  1. HA concepts
  2. Configure HA on FW-A
  3. Configure HA on FW-B
  4. Synchronise the configuration and check the state
  5. Fail over

The Lab Tasks pane has the scenario, these tasks, the checks to run, hints and the full solution.

Topology and devices

The network as it opens in EVE-NG, drawn from the lab’s own canvas, and the image each node runs.

Topology of High availability - active-passive with link and path monitoring4 nodes and 2 networks, 9 links. Every link is listed as text below the diagram.FW-AFW-BClient-PCInternetInsideOutsideeth0eth0mgmtethernet1/2mgmtethernet1/2ethernet1/1ethernet1/1ethernet1/3ethernet1/3
4 nodes and 2 networks, with the interface names each link uses. On a narrow screen, scroll the diagram sideways.
Every link, as text
  • FW-A mgmt to Inside (network)
  • FW-B mgmt to Inside (network)
  • FW-A ethernet1/2 to Inside (network)
  • FW-B ethernet1/2 to Inside (network)
  • FW-A ethernet1/1 to Outside (network)
  • FW-B ethernet1/1 to Outside (network)
  • FW-A ethernet1/3 to FW-B ethernet1/3
  • Client-PC eth0 to Inside (network)
  • Internet eth0 to Outside (network)
Nodes in High availability: active/passive with link and path monitoring, with the image each runs and the vCPU and RAM it’s set to
NodeDeviceImage in Add NodeSet to
FW-APalo Alto Networks VM-Series (PAN-OS)paloalto-11.2.52 vCPU, 5,632 MB
FW-BPalo Alto Networks VM-Series (PAN-OS)paloalto-11.2.52 vCPU, 5,632 MB
Client-PCEVE-NG GUI server (Docker)eve-gui-server:latest1 vCPU, 1,024 MB
InternetEVE-NG GUI server (Docker)eve-gui-server:latest1 vCPU, 512 MB

How to open this lab

  1. Sign in to your workspace at lab.cloudlabbox.com.

  2. In File Manager, open Shared, then the folder Palo Alto NGFW PAN-OS 11 guided labs.

  3. Open 20 - High availability - active-passive with link and path monitoring and start its nodes, then open Lab Tasks for the scenario and the steps.

The lab is read-only. You can start the nodes and configure the devices, but changes to the topology can’t be saved. To change it, rebuild it in your own folder.

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CloudLabBox is independent of Palo Alto Networks and Cisco. The lab follows exam topics and isn’t vendor training material; vendor names identify the exams and the images in the workspace.