Licensing of ACE Modules in Active/Standby Mode

[fiene3606]

Hello Everyone,

I have a customer who has ACE10 modules running in Active/Standby mode in two separate 6500s. The customer wishes to upgrade from 4G to 8G throughput, and add 20 Virtual Contexts. Is it possible to Upgrade just the Active one, and in case of a failover lose some speed/contexts, or do they have to upgrade both at the same time in order to have them configured in Active/Standby mode?

Thank you.

Tyler

[kitanaka]

Hello Tyler,

According to the configuration guide, bandwidth can be different if the customer is

ok to lose connections in the event of failover.

About contexts, it need to be identical to form FT properly.

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Configuration Synchronization

For redundancy to function properly, both members of an FT group must  have identical configurations. Ensure that both ACE modules include the  same bandwidth software license (4  Gbps, 8 Gbps, or 16 Gbps) and the same virtual context software license. If there is a mismatch in a  software license between the two ACE modules in an  FT group, the following operational behavior can occur:

•If there is a mismatch in the virtual  context software license, synchronization between the  active ACE and standby ACE may not work properly.

•If both the active and the standby ACE  modules have the same virtual content software license but have a different bandwidth  software license, synchronization will work  properly but the standby ACE may experience a potential loss of traffic  on switchover from, for example, an 8-Gbps ACE module to a 4-Gbps ACE  module.

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Although technically bandwidth license can be differ, I think it is safer

to recommend the customer to upgrade both active and  standby at the same time.

Hope this help.

Regards,

Kimihito.