A security engineer is documenting the automated failover process for an active-passive cluster of perimeter firewalls. When the primary node experiences an unrecoverable hardware failure, specific high-availability failover events must occur. Place the following operational steps in the correct chronological order from first to last.
- 1The standby firewall node detects consecutive missed heartbeat signals from the primary firewall node.
- 2The standby firewall node transitions its internal cluster state from passive to active.
- 3The newly active node broadcasts Gratuitous ARP (GARP) requests across the local network segment.
- 4The newly active node begins receiving, inspecting, and forwarding stateful network traffic.
Answer
The correct operational order is: 1) The standby firewall node detects consecutive missed heartbeat signals from the primary firewall node, 2) The standby firewall node transitions its internal cluster state from passive to active, 3) The newly active node broadcasts Gratuitous ARP (GARP) requests across the local network segment, and 4) The newly active node begins receiving, inspecting, and forwarding stateful network traffic.
In high-availability active-passive clustering, failover begins when the passive node notices consecutive missing heartbeats from the primary. The passive node promotes itself to active status, then broadcasts Gratuitous ARP (GARP) packets to update surrounding switch MAC address tables with its interface details for the virtual IP, and finally starts processing network traffic.
Step-by-Step Solution
Key Concept
Active-Passive Cluster Failover Sequence