Multiple instances and failover

[jonathanstevens]

Is the following possible....

Two FWSMs (A & B) with two instances on each (A1, A2, B1, B2).

A1 failover to B2, B1 failover to A2

In other words, in normal operation I have two independant firewalls in different chassis, but should one of them fail, the other takes on it's workload as a second instance.

[nkhawaja]

Hi,

Getting Confused, assuming that A1 B2 & A2 B1, have same set of interfaces, and IP addresses in the same ranges, right?

If so, then it is possible ofcourse

[jonathanstevens]

Basically, I am asking if failover is on a per instance basis, or per blade.

So, I can configure a second instance on one blade, to act as a failover for another blade. In the event of one blade failing, the other blade will take on the workload of both?

[nkhawaja]

I think it is per instance basis in multi-context mode

Thanks

[jonathanstevens]

That's really good news.

Has this been done anywhere?

I'd love to lab this before I try and implement it but I doubt I'll be able to.

(I think this might be a subtle plea for someone at Cisco with a couple of these blades to try out?)

[jonathanstevens]

Well I know it's a few months down the line, but I've just come to the point where we're about to implement this and it would appear that there is a line in the failover documentation that claims that...

"For multiple context mode, the FWSM can fail over the entire module (including all contexts) but cannot fail over individual contexts seperately."

Does anyone know if there are any plans to resolve this inadequacy? Either in this release train or the next?