Redundant FWSM Config Question

[John Apricena]

Hello All,

I'm going to be configuring failover with FWSMs for our 6500 at my job and I have a config question. There is one current 6500 chassis with 2 FWSMs installed. They are both online but currently since failover isn't setup, only one FWSM is actually active. My question is since we are using mutiple contexts where do I setup the failover interface, and do I need to configure failover on every single vlan on the FWSM? We have over 10 contexts each with 2-3 interfaces on them, so do I need a failover IP for every vlan that exists on every context? Also, does the failover config get setup on the admin or system context? Any help would be greatly appreciated, and thank you so much in advance!

[zujalal · Accepted solution]

Hi John.

Failover config goes in the system context. For the data interfaces in each context, you will need a primary and a standby IP i.e. 2 IP's per VLAN. Once failover happens, the secondary FWSM will assume the active role and the secondary FWSM will take over the Primary IP address thus making the failover process transparent to end users.

HTH.

Regards

Zubair

[John Apricena]

Thanks for the quick reply zujalal!

Just one more question, If I have a shared VLAN accross multiple FWSMs what is the best way to handle the standby IP? Does each FWSM that contains this VLAN need to to have a primary and standby IP associated to it? Thanks for you help!

[John Apricena]

bump

[zujalal]

The primary and standby addresses will apply to a FWSM pair only.If 2 FWSMs are in A/S or A/A, they will need a active and standby IP address. 

HTH