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Overview of FortiADC HA pairing on the Azure platform

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Overview of FortiADC HA pairing on the Azure platform

Microsoft Azure supports FortiADC HA (High Availability) in Active-Active-VRRP mode. Azure can only support the VRRP HA mode because other modes that require access to Layer 2 are inaccessible in Public Cloud environments. For more information on FortiADC HA modes or the Azure Virtual Network, see the FortiADC Handbook on High Availability Deployments and the Azure Virtual Network FAQ.

There are 2 methods to deploy the FortiADC VRRP HA on Azure:

  1. Deploy the VRRP HA using an API call to Azure
  2. Deploy the VRRP HA using Azure Load Balancers

Introduced in the FortiADC 6.2.0 release, the method of using Azure Load Balancers to pair FortiADC HA on the Azure platform was developed to resolve the issues created by the Azure API call. Previously, VRRP HA on Azure used the API call to Azure to migrate the public IPs associated with the FortiADC-VM on the Azure backend in the event of HA failover. The IP migration process may take several minutes during the HA failover, causing business traffic to break until the migration is complete. With using Azure Load Balancers, the downtime for the FortiADC member may only be seconds during the HA failover because it does not require IP migration.

For more details on the two HA deployment methods, see VRRP HA using API call to Azure and VRRP HA using Azure Load Balancers.

Overview of FortiADC HA pairing on the Azure platform

Microsoft Azure supports FortiADC HA (High Availability) in Active-Active-VRRP mode. Azure can only support the VRRP HA mode because other modes that require access to Layer 2 are inaccessible in Public Cloud environments. For more information on FortiADC HA modes or the Azure Virtual Network, see the FortiADC Handbook on High Availability Deployments and the Azure Virtual Network FAQ.

There are 2 methods to deploy the FortiADC VRRP HA on Azure:

  1. Deploy the VRRP HA using an API call to Azure
  2. Deploy the VRRP HA using Azure Load Balancers

Introduced in the FortiADC 6.2.0 release, the method of using Azure Load Balancers to pair FortiADC HA on the Azure platform was developed to resolve the issues created by the Azure API call. Previously, VRRP HA on Azure used the API call to Azure to migrate the public IPs associated with the FortiADC-VM on the Azure backend in the event of HA failover. The IP migration process may take several minutes during the HA failover, causing business traffic to break until the migration is complete. With using Azure Load Balancers, the downtime for the FortiADC member may only be seconds during the HA failover because it does not require IP migration.

For more details on the two HA deployment methods, see VRRP HA using API call to Azure and VRRP HA using Azure Load Balancers.