F5 ARX-500, Hardware Reference Manual

Page: 34 / 90

Chapter 2
ARX Overview
2 - 8
ARX-4000
Redundant Pairs
You can purchase two ARX devices and configure them as a redundant pair.
If the primary switch fails, all services
fail over to the secondary switch. The
redundant switches are interconnected through one or more of their gigabit
Ethernet ports. You can use the CLI to configure the ports for
redundant-link traffic (as opposed to client/server traffic). This provides a
highly-available (HA) service with fault tolerance and no single point of
failure.
This redundant design provides the following features:
• For two switches in a redundant pair, one switch starts as primary and the
other switch starts as secondary. If a module in the primary switch fails,
the switch fails over to the secondary.
• RAID Level 1 protected boot/configuration disk drives.
• Redundant power supplies installed to share the power load.
• Redundant connections to the fan tray.
• Redundant AC/DC power.
For information about configuring redundant switches, see the ARX® CLI
Network-Management Guide and ARX® CLI Reference .
If you are installing the second switch in a redundant pair, there are
differences in the initial-boot procedure. Consult the hardware installation
guide for your specific ARX platform.
Resilient Overlay Network
You can connect multiple ARX devices through one or more gigabit
Ethernet ports to form a Resilient Overlay Network (RON), a series of IP
tunnels between the switches. The switches in a RON can be of any platform
type.
The RON provides a network for distributing and accessing file storage.
ARX devices can replicate storage to other switches in the same RON,
updating the replicas periodically as the writable master files change. This