In serial cable-based active/standby failover, there are two PIX Security
Appliances interconnected with a serial failover cable. One unit is the primary
unit the other is the secondary unit. In the top example Figure
, the primary PIX
is active and passes traffic. The IP addresses of the outside and inside
interfaces are 192.168.2.2 and 10.0.2.1. The secondary unit is standby and has
interface IP addresses of 192.168.2.7 and 10.0.2.7. In the bottom example in
Figure
, notice the
primary PIX failed. In active/standby applications, the type of failover unit
did not change. The primary unit is still the primary unit. What changed are
the roles, active and standby, and the interface IP addresses. The secondary
unit is now the active unit passing the traffic. The interface IP addresses
were swapped. The secondary unit inherited the IP addresses of the primary
unit, 192.168.2.2 and 10.0.2.1.
Complete the steps below to configure
failover with a serial failover cable. Before starting this procedure, if the
standby PIX Security Appliance is powered on, it must be powered down and left
off until instructed to power it on.
Step 1 Attach a network cable for each network interface that is
planned to be used.
Step 2 Connect the failover cable between the
primary PIX Security Appliance and the secondary PIX.
Step 3
Configure the following failover parameters on the PIX Security Appliance. When
this configuration is finished, save it to the Flash memory of the primary
unit.
- Failover
- Standby IP addresses
- Stateful failover interface. This is optional, for use with stateful
failover.
- Failover poll time (optional).
Step 4 Power on the secondary PIX Security Appliance.