01-22-2014 12:10 PM - edited 03-11-2019 08:34 PM
Hello all, we have a couple of asa5520s that are configure in active/failover mode.
A while ago we had an issue with the primary unit so we took it out of production and replaced it. At that time the secondary unit became active.
Needless to say in over a month many changes have been made on the now active unit, but we are now ready to re-introduce the replaced primary unity into the cluster and I'm wondering what the best way to do this is.
All the documentation that I'm reading says:
•If a unit boots and detects a peer already running as active, it becomes the standby unit.
thereby it gets its configuration from the active unit and we should be fine, however, our previous attempt at bringing the resuscitated primary unit into the cluster was a faux pas as it appears that the primary/standy unit started overwriting the current active unit's configuration. I don't know the details, I wasn't present.
So, here are my options as I see them to bring this primary unit back in production, if someone with a good heart would please look them over and let me know what they think the best way to do this is, I would appreciate it immensely...
1) Bring resuscitated primary unit back up (offline); copy the current configuration from secondary/active unit into primary unit. Bring primary unit online;
2) Reconfigure secondary unit as primary, and primary unit as secondary, bring secondary unit back online;
3) Completely break failover; wipe resuscitated unit and reconfigure failover on both;
4) best practice??...
Thanks in advance.
R
Here's some failover related output (sanitized) from our secondary/active unit:
asa# sh failover
Failover On
Failover unit Secondary
Failover LAN Interface: cccfailover GigabitEthernet0/3 (Failed - No Switchover)
Unit Poll frequency 1 seconds, holdtime 15 seconds
Interface Poll frequency 5 seconds, holdtime 25 seconds
Interface Policy 1
Monitored Interfaces 7 of 160 maximum
Version: Ours 8.2(5), Mate Unknown
Last Failover at: 17:58:13 PST Dec 17 2013
This host: Secondary - Active
Active time: 3088437 (sec)
slot 0: ASA5520 hw/sw rev (1.1/8.2(5)) status (Up Sys)
Interface outside : Normal (Waiting)
Interface inside : Normal (Waiting)
Interface 1 : Normal (Waiting)
Interface 2 : Normal (Waiting)
Interface 3 : Normal (Waiting)
Interface 4 : Normal (Waiting)
Interface 5 Normal (Waiting)
Interface management : No Link (Not-Monitored)
slot 1: ASA-SSM-20 hw/sw rev (1.0/7.0(2)E3) status (Up/Up)
IPS, 7.0(2)E3, Up
Other host: Primary - Failed
Active time: 0 (sec)
slot 0: empty
Interface outside : Unknown (Waiting)
Interface inside : Unknown (Waiting)
Interface 1 : Unknown (Waiting)
Interface 2 : Unknown (Waiting)
Interface 3 : Unknown (Waiting)
Interface 4 : Unknown (Waiting)
Interface 5 : Unknown (Waiting)
Interface management : Unknown (Not-Monitored)
slot 1: empty
Stateful Failover Logical Update Statistics
Link : cccfailover GigabitEthernet0/3 (Failed)
Stateful Obj xmit xerr rcv rerr
General 0 0 0 0
sys cmd 0 0 0 0
up time 0 0 0 0
RPC services 0 0 0 0
TCP conn 0 0 0 0
UDP conn 0 0 0 0
ARP tbl 0 0 0 0
Xlate_Timeout 0 0 0 0
IPv6 ND tbl 0 0 0 0
VPN IKE upd 0 0 0 0
VPN IPSEC upd 0 0 0 0
VPN CTCP upd 0 0 0 0
VPN SDI upd 0 0 0 0
VPN DHCP upd 0 0 0 0
SIP Session 0 0 0 0
Logical Update Queue Information
Cur Max Total
Recv Q: 0 0 0
Xmit Q: 0 0 0
asa# sh run failover
failover
failover lan unit secondary
failover lan interface cccfailover GigabitEthernet0/3
failover link cccfailover GigabitEthernet0/3
failover interface ip cccfailover 10.10.10.1 255.255.255.0 standby 10.10.10.2
01-22-2014 12:39 PM
Hi,
I have not had to do this that many times since frankly I have not had that many ASAs break. Though I have to say that we had both of our VPN ASAs break (not at the same time though) and had to replace both. Each unit never recovered after a boot which makes it seem like they suffer from somekind of manufacturing defect. (Aquired at the same time and seem to be pretty much manufactured at the same time)
But to move into the actual subject,
I have done these replacements about 3 times that I can remember. Each time I have done them the same way.
I am not sure what has happend in your situation but I have had no problems like yours or wiping the configuration. Only had the Config Sync stop which required another reboot.
To my understanding if there is an Active ASA in an Active/Standy Failover pair then the Active device should not change since the units are pretty much equal with regards to eachother unless they are booted around the same time.
I don't however know how your installation has gone wrong. I have gaps in my knowledge about the different behaviour of Failover pair since they seem to work just fine and have not had to go indepth to troubleshoot any of our setups.
I am wondering for example what is the result if the replacement unit were to go Active before it has time to detect the other unit. Which one will go to Standby when both presume to be Active.
So I am not sure what went wrong with your situation but it has worked for me so far.
Being paranoid as I am with even the most certain/safe changes on networks, I tend to take backups and come up with some plan if some bad should happen.
- Jouni
01-22-2014 04:53 PM
Hello, thanks for replying, so that I understand correclty when you say:
you mean on the "resuscitated" asa which config has just been wiped, I should add
failover
failover lan unit primary
Then when I reboot it, it will see the active asa and it will start to pull the config from it, right?
At least, this is the way I also read in the documentation that it should work.
01-22-2014 08:04 PM
Hello ,
On your replacement ASA <ther host: Primary - Failed> do the failover configuration
failover lan unit primary
failover lan interface cccfailover GigabitEthernet0/3
failover link cccfailover GigabitEthernet0/3
failover interface ip cccfailover 10.10.10.1 255.255.255.0 standby 10.10.10.2
then do the required connectivity . then enable
failover , after that you will see that both ASA will syn. with each other.
Hope this will help you.
01-23-2014 12:22 AM
Hi,
I personally did the following
This hasnt failed me so far.
- Jouni
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