Cisco Secure Firewall Services Module (FWSM)

Chapter 12 Understanding Failover in FWSM

This chapter covers the concept of failover, its configurations, and redundancy in a Firewall Services Module (FWSM). Planning failure scenarios is always a good practice when designing a network solution. Redundancy for disaster recovery should always be a part of the network. Likewise, redundancy is also needed for firewalls.

Creating Redundancy in the FWSM

The two types of modes for redundancy in FWSM are as follows:

• Active/Standby mode

• Active/Active mode

The sections that follow cover the two modes in detail.

Understanding Active/Standby Mode

The firewall has an active unit and a nonactive unit. The active unit is called a primary firewall and the nonactive unit is called a secondary firewall. ...