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Forcing Transitions
In some cases, it may be necessary to force a transition from one active SonicWALL to another
– for example, to force the primary SonicWALL to become active again after a failure when
Preempt Mode
has not been enabled, or to force the backup SonicWALL to become active in
order to do preventive maintenance on the primary SonicWALL.
To force such a transition, it is necessary to interrupt the heartbeat from the currently active
SonicWALL. This may be accomplished by disconnecting the active SonicWALL’s LAN port, by
shutting off power on the currently active unit, or by restarting it from the Web Management
Interface. In all of these cases, heartbeats from the active SonicWALL are interrupted, which
forces the currently
Idle
unit to become
Active
.
To restart the active SonicWALL, log into the primary SonicWALL LAN IP Address and click
Tools
on the left side of the browser window and then click
Restart
at the top of the window.
Click
Restart SonicWALL
, then
Yes
to confirm the restart. Once the active SonicWALL
restarts, the other SonicWALL in the
High Availability
pair takes over operation.
Note
: If the
Preempt Mode
checkbox has been checked for the primary SonicWALL, the
primary unit takes over operation from the backup unit after the restart is complete.
Configuration Notes
•
Changing Password
- Do not change the password on the Backup firewall when it is in
Idle condition. Changing the password prevents communication between the firewalls.
•
If you are configuring the SonicWALL in
Standard
mode on the network, an additional IP
address is necessary for the
High
Availability
configuration.
•
Auto Update
- If
Auto Update
is enabled for firmware upgrades, the Primary SonicWALL
should be upgraded first. And during the upgrade, the backup SonicWALL should be
disconnected from the LAN or turned off. When the firmware upgrade is performed on the
backup SonicWALL, the Primary SonicWALL should be disconnected from the network or
turned off.
