Fortinet 97 FortiWeb 5.0 Patch 6 Administration Guide
Configuring a high availability (HA) FortiWeb cluster
By default, FortiWeb appliances are each a single, standalone appliance. They operate
independently.
If you have purchased more than one, however, you can configure the FortiWeb appliances to
form an active-passive high availability (HA) FortiWeb cluster. This improves availability so that
you can achieve 99.999% service level agreement (SLA) uptimes regardless of, for example,
hardware failure or maintenance periods.
HA requirements
• Two identical physical FortiWeb appliances (i.e., the same hardware model and firmware
version (for example, both appliances could be a FortiWeb 3000C running FortiWeb 5.0
Patch 6))
• Redundant network topology: if the active appliance fails, physical network cabling and
routes must be able to redirect web traffic to the standby appliance (see “Topologies for high
availability (HA) clustering” on page 68)
• At least one physical port on both HA appliances connected directly, via crossover cables, or
through switches (see “HA heartbeat & synchronization” on page 40)
• If using FortiWeb-VM, the license must be paid; trial licenses will not function
If you have multiple FortiWeb appliances but do not need failover, you can still synchronize the
configuration. This can be useful for cloned network environments and externally
load-balanced active-active HA. See “Replicating the configuration without FortiWeb HA
(external HA)” on page 107.
FortiWeb-VM supports HA. However, if you do not wish to use the native HA, you can use your
hypervisor or VM environment manager to install your virtual appliances over a hardware cluster
to improve availability. For example, VMware clusters can use vMotion or VMware HA.