Certainly! Below is a comprehensive HTML-formatted guide detailing High Availability (HA) failover triggers in Palo Alto Networks firewalls, methods to detect them, and troubleshooting steps:
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Palo Alto Networks HA Failover Triggers, Detection, and Troubleshooting
🔁 Palo Alto Networks HA Failover Triggers, Detection, and Troubleshooting
1. HA Failover Triggers
Failover in a High Availability (HA) setup can be triggered by various events:
- Heartbeat Failure: Loss of heartbeat messages between HA peers indicates a failure, prompting a failover.
- Link Monitoring: Monitored interfaces going down can trigger a failover based on configured conditions (e.g., any or all links down).
- Path Monitoring: Failure to reach specified IP addresses (via ICMP pings) can initiate a failover.
- Manual Intervention: Administrators can manually suspend a device, causing the peer to become active.
- Preemption: If enabled, a higher priority device can resume the active role once it recovers from a failure.
For more details, refer to the HA Failover Concepts documentation.
2. Detecting Failover Events
To detect and analyze failover events:
- System Logs: Navigate to
Monitor > Logs > System and filter logs with ( eventid eq state-change ) to identify HA state changes.
- CLI Commands: Use the following commands:
show high-availability state: Displays the current HA state and the last state transition reason.show high-availability all: Provides comprehensive HA information, including peer status and connection reasons.
- Dashboard Widget: Add the High Availability widget to the dashboard for real-time status monitoring.
3. Troubleshooting Failover Issues
Steps to troubleshoot HA failover issues:
- Verify HA Link Status: Ensure HA1 and HA2 links are operational. Use
show high-availability interface ha1 and show high-availability interface ha2 to check their status.
- Check Hardware Components: Inspect cables, SFPs, and ports for faults. Replace any faulty components.
- Monitor Resource Utilization: High CPU or memory usage can affect HA functionality. Use
show system resources to monitor system performance.
- Review Configuration Consistency: Ensure both HA peers have identical configurations, including PAN-OS versions and licenses.
- Analyze Logs: Examine system logs for events leading up to the failover to identify potential causes.
For a detailed guide, refer to the HA Peer Connection Status article.
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