Chapter 4. High Availability

The typical role of a FortiGate unit, a gateway to external networks and to the Internet, requires safeguards to prevent the following two problems:

• Failure of a single unit that could bring an interruption of network services

• Network traffic overloads that could create a bottleneck effect on the network traffic

Both these scenarios would have unacceptable consequences on the reliability and usability of the network. To avoid the problem related to failures, Fortinet proposes four different solutions, which are as follows:

• FortiGate Cluster Protocol (FGCP): This solution enables us to aggregate two or more FortiGate devices into one logical unit (cluster). A cluster eliminates the single point of failure and FGCP allows us to configure the cluster units in two different structures: active-passive or active-active. Active-active configuration also relieves network traffic, balancing the load on all the available cluster units and preventing bottlenecks. FGCP is a...