Chapter 7. Increasing Firewall Availability with Failover

Refer to the following sections for information about these topics:

• 7-1: Firewall Failover Overview— Provides a concise reference of information about how Cisco Firewall Failover works.

• 7-2: Configuring Firewall Failover— Covers the steps needed to configure and use firewalls as a failover pair.

• 7-3: Firewall Failover Configuration Examples— Presents several complete examples of different types of failover configurations.

• 7-4: Managing Firewall Failover— Explains the commands you can use to verify failover operation and to manually intervene in the failover process.

• 7-5: Upgrading Firewalls in Failover Mode— Discusses a strategy for upgrading the operating system image on a failover pair of firewalls.

The previous chapters in this book explain how to configure a single Cisco firewall to inspect traffic and provide the necessary security policies in a network. As long as that firewall continues to run properly, has a continuous source of power, and has consistent network connectivity, it can offer reliable service. What happens when those conditions are less than perfect?