Juniper SRX Series

Chapter 7. High Availability

Information availability is a daily part of modern society. People make phone calls, read the news, stream songs, check sports scores, and watch television all over the Internet or on their local provider’s network. At any given time, at any given location, almost any bit of information can be made available over the Internet. Today, and in the near future, it’s expected that there should be no interruptions to the access of this flow of information. Failure to provide all of the world’s information at any user’s fingertips at any time, day or night, will create great wrath on whomever’s network is in the way. Welcome to the twenty-first century.

The average user of Internet services is unable to comprehend why the information she desires is not available. All that user knows is that it isn’t, and that is no longer acceptable. Consumers clamor for compensation and complain to all available outlets. Business users call the help desk and demand explanations while escalating their lost connection to all levels. Revenue is lost and the world looks bleak. Information must always be highly available, not just available.

The most likely location of a failure somewhere in the network is typically between the client device and the server. This chapter is dedicated to training network administrators on how to ensure that their SRX is not the device that brings down the network. Firewalls are placed in the most critical locations in the network, and when problems ...