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Cisco ASA 5500 Series Configuration Guide using the CLI
Chapter62 Configuring Active/Standby Failover
Controlling Failover
Disabling Failover
To disable failover, enter the following command:
Restoring a Failed Unit
To restore a failed unit to an unfailed state, enter the following command:
Testing the Failover Functionality
To test failover functionality, perform the following steps:
Step1 Test that your active unit is passing traffic as expected by using FTP (for example) to send a file between
hosts on different interfaces.
Step2 Force a failover by entering the following command on the active unit:
hostname(config)# no failover active
Step3 Use FTP to send another file between the same two hosts.
Step4 If the test was not successful, enter the show failover command to check the failover status.
Step5 When you are finished, you can restore the unit to active status by enter the following command on the
newly active unit:
hostname(config)# no failover active
Note When an ASA interface goes down, for failover it is still considered to be a unit issue. If the ASA detects
that an interface is down, failover occurs immediately, without waiting for the interface holdtime. The
interface holdtime is only useful when the ASA considers its status to be OK, although it is not receiving
hello packets from the peer. To simulate interface holdtime, shut down the VLAN on the switch to
prevent peers from receiving hello packets from each other.
Command Purpose
no failover
Example:
hostname(config)# no failover
Disables failover. Disabling failover on an Active/Standby pair causes the
active and standby state of each unit to be maintained until you restart. For
example, the standby unit remains in standby mode so that both units do
not start passing traffic. To make the standby unit active (even with failover
disabled), see the “Forcing Failover” section on page62-16.
Command Purpose
failover reset
Example:
hostname(config)# failover reset
Restores a failed unit to an unfailed state. Restoring a failed unit to an
unfailed state does not automatically make it active; restored units remain
in the standby state until made active by failover (forced or natural).