96 Fortinet Inc.
Advanced HA options High availability
Configuring the priority of each FortiGate unit in the cluster
In addition to selecting a permanent primary FortiGate unit, you can set the priorities
of each of the subordinate units in the cluster to control the failover path. For example,
if you have three FortiGate units in an HA cluster and you configured one as the
permanent primary FortiGate unit, you might always want the cluster to failover to the
same FortiGate unit if the primary unit fails.
If you have many FortiGate units in the cluster, you can assign a different priority to
each of them to create a failover path.
To set the priority of each FortiGate unit in a cluster
1 Connect to the cluster and log into the CLI.
2 Select a permanent primary unit by following all the steps in the procedure “Selecting
a FortiGate unit as a permanent primary unit” on page 95.
3 From the primary unit CLI, enter the following command to log into a subordinate
cluster member:
execute ha manage <cluster-member_int>
4 Set the priority of the cluster member. Enter:
set system ha priority <priority_int>
Where <priority_int> is the priority to set for the permanent primary unit. The
permanent primary unit must have the lowest priority. The unit with the second lowest
priority always becomes the new primary unit if the permanent primary unit fails. The
default priority is 128.
For example, to set the priority of a cluster unit to 20, enter the command:
set system ha priority 20
5 Enter the command exit to return to the primary unit CLI.
6 Repeat steps 3 to 5 for each cluster unit.
Configuring weighted-round-robin weights
By default, in active-active HA mode the weighted round-robin schedule assigns the
same weight to each FortiGate unit in the cluster. If you configure a cluster to use the
weighted round-robin schedule, you can use the set system ha weight
command to configure a weight value for each cluster unit. The weight value sets the
maximum number of connections that are sent to a cluster unit before a connection
can be sent to the next cluster unit. You can set weight values to control the number of
connections processed by each cluster unit. For example, you might want to reduce
the number of connections processed by the primary cluster unit by increasing the
weight assigned to the subordinate cluster units.
Weight values are entered in order according to the priority of the units in the cluster.
For example, if you have a cluster of three FortiGate units, you can enter the following
command to configure the weight values for each unit:
set system ha weight 1 3 3