FCP-FGT-AD - Deployment and system configuration - Section 1.3

Configure an FGCP high-availability cluster including active-passive and active-active modes.

Configure an FGCP high-availability cluster, selecting between active-passive and active-active modes and setting the HA heartbeat interface. Distinguish how session synchronisation preserves established connections during a failover and identify the settings that affect cluster priority and link monitoring.

FGCPhigh availabilityHA heartbeatsession synchronisation

Practice question for this objective

Free sampleDeployment and system configurationmedium

A FortiGate cluster carries long-lived sessions for an internal application, and the administrator needs those existing connections to survive a failover without being re-established. The HA configuration currently has session pickup left at its default state. Which action best meets this requirement?

  • AEnable session pickup so the primary continuously synchronises its session table to the secondary, letting sessions resume after failover. Correct
  • BLeave session pickup disabled because the synchronised configuration alone is enough to preserve active sessions through a failover.
  • CSwitch the cluster from active-passive to active-active, since active-active mode keeps both units holding identical session tables at all times.
  • DIncrease the HA heartbeat interval so the secondary has more time to copy sessions before declaring the primary failed.
Understand that enabling HA session pickup synchronises the session table so established connections survive an FGCP failover. Configuration synchronisation keeps settings aligned but does not replicate live sessions. Session pickup additionally synchronises the kernel session table from primary to secondary, so after a failover the new primary already has the active sessions and long-lived connections continue instead of being dropped and rebuilt.

Why A is correct: Session pickup synchronises the kernel session table from primary to secondary, so when the secondary takes over it already holds the active sessions and established connections continue without re-establishment.

Why B is wrong: Tempting because configuration synchronisation runs continuously, but config sync does not copy the live session table; without session pickup, sessions are rebuilt after failover rather than preserved.

Why C is wrong: Plausible because active-active shares the inspection load, but session survival across failover depends on session pickup, not on the active-active mode, which still relies on session synchronisation to preserve connections.

Why D is wrong: This misreads heartbeat timing; a longer interval delays failure detection rather than improving session continuity, and session preservation comes from session pickup synchronising the table, not from heartbeat tuning.

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