High Availability Options
Distributed VPN Clustering, Load balancing and Failover are high-availability features that function differently and have different requirements. In some circumstances you may use multiple capabilities in your deployment. The following sections describe these features. Refer to the appropriate release of the ASA General Operations ASDM Configuration Guide for details on Distributed VPN and Failover. Load Balancing details are included here.
VPN and Clustering on the FXOS Chassis
An ASA FXOS Cluster supports one of two mutually exclusive modes for S2S VPN, centralized or distributed:
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Centralized VPN Mode. The default mode. In centralized mode, VPN connections are established with the control unit of the cluster only.
VPN functionality is limited to the control unit and does not take advantage of the cluster high availability capabilities. If the control unit fails, all existing VPN connections are lost, and VPN connected users see a disruption in service. When a new control unit is elected, you must reestablish the VPN connections.
When you connect a VPN tunnel to a Spanned interface address, connections are automatically forwarded to the control unit. VPN-related keys and certificates are replicated to all units.
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Distributed VPN Mode. In this mode, S2S IPsec IKEv2 VPN connections are distributed across members of an ASA cluster providing scalability. Distributing VPN connections across the members of a cluster allows both the capacity and throughput of the cluster to be fully utilized, significantly scaling VPN support beyond Centralized VPN capabilities.
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Centralized VPN clustering mode supports S2S IKEv1 and S2S IKEv2. Distributed VPN clustering mode supports S2S IKEv2 only. Distributed VPN clustering mode is supported on the Firepower 9300 only. Remote access VPN is not supported in centralized or distributed VPN clustering mode. |
VPN Load Balancing
VPN load balancing is a mechanism for equitably distributing remote-access VPN traffic among the devices in a VPN load-balancing group. It is based on simple distribution of traffic without taking into account throughput or other factors. A VPN load-balancing group consists of two or more devices. One device is the director, and the other devices are member devices. Group devices do not need to be of the exact same type, or have identical software versions or configurations.
All active devices in a VPN load-balancing group carry session loads. VPN load balancing directs traffic to the least-loaded device in the group, distributing the load among all devices. It makes efficient use of system resources and provides increased performance and high availability.
Failover
A failover configuration requires two identical ASAs connected to each other through a dedicated failover link and, optionally, a stateful failover link. The health of the active interfaces and units is monitored to determine when specific failover conditions are met. If those conditions occur, failover occurs. Failover supports both VPN and firewall configurations.
The ASA supports two failover configurations: Active/Active failover and Active/Standby failover.
With Active/Active failover, both units can pass network traffic. This is not true load balancing, although it might appear to have the same effect. When failover occurs, the remaining active unit takes over passing the combined traffic, based on the configured parameters. Therefore, when configuring Active/Active failover, you must make sure that the combined traffic for both units is within the capacity of each unit.
With Active/Standby failover, only one unit passes traffic, while the other unit waits in a standby state and does not pass traffic. Active/Standby failover lets you use a second ASA to take over the functions of a failed unit. When the active unit fails, it changes to the standby state, while the standby unit changes to the active state. The unit that becomes active assumes the IP addresses (or, for transparent firewall, the management IP address) and MAC addresses of the failed unit and begins passing traffic. The unit that is now in standby state takes over the standby IP addresses of the active unit. If an active unit fails, the standby takes over without any interruption to the client VPN tunnel.