Citrix NetScaler EE, Installation And Configuration Manual

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How High-Availability Mode Works
Dec 06, 2012
In a high availability (HA) pair, one appliance is primary, and the other is secondary. The primary monitors its own and the
secondary's status. If it detects a problem, traffic processing fails over to the secondary appliance. Existing TCP
connections are terminated. To ensure successful failover, the two appliances keep their configurations synchronized. In a
WCCP mode high availability configuration, the appliance that is processing traffic maintains communication with the
upstream router.
St at us monit oring St at us monit oring— When high availability is enabled, the primary appliance uses the VRRP protocol to send a heartbeat
signal to the secondary appliance once per second. In addition, the primary appliance monitors the carrier status of its
Ethernet ports. The loss of carrier on a previously active port implies a loss of connectivity.
Failover Failover If the heartbeat signal of the primary appliance should fail, or if the primary appliance loses carrier for five seconds
on any previously active Ethernet port, the secondary appliance takes over, becoming the primary. When the failed
appliance restarts, it becomes the secondary. The new primary announces itself on the network with an ARP broadcast.
MAC spoofing is not used. Ethernet bridging is disabled on the secondary appliance, leaving the primary appliance as the
only path for inline traffic. Fail-to-wire is inhibited on both appliances to prevent loops.
Warning
The Ethernet bypass function is disabled in HA mode. If both appliances in an inline HA pair lose power, connectivity is lost. If WAN
connectivity is needed during power outages, at least one appliance must be attached to a backup power source.
Note
The secondary appliance in the HA pair has one of its bridge ports, port apA.1, disabled to prevent forwarding loops. If the appliance
has dual bridges, apB.1 is also disabled. In a one-arm installation, use port apA.2. Otherwise, the secondary appliance becomes
inaccessible when HA is enabled.
Primary/secondary Primary/secondary assignment assignment — If both appliances are restarted, the first one to fully initialize itself becomes the
primary. That is, the appliances have no assigned roles, and the first one to become available takes over as the primary. The
appliance with the highest IP address on the interface used for the VRRP heartbeat is used as a tie-breaker if both become
available at the same time.
Connect ion t erminat ion during Connect ion t erminat ion during f ailover f ailover— Both accelerated and unaccelerated TCP connections are terminated as a
side effect of failover. Non-TCP sessions are not affected, except for the delay caused by the brief period (several seconds)
between the failure of the primary appliance and the failover to the secondary appliance. Users experience the closing of
open connections, but they can open new connections.
Configurat ion Configurat ion synchronizat ion synchronizat ion— The two appliances synchronize their settings to ensure that the secondary is ready to
take over for the primary. If the configuration of the pair is changed through the browser based interface, the primary
appliance updates the secondary appliance immediately.