Overview

This article answers the frequently asked questions on High Availability (HA) licensing.

The following questions are answered:

• What licenses do I need when I have 2 appliances in High Availability mode
  • For Active-Active mode
  • For Active-Passive mode

Applies to the following Sophos products
Sophos XG Firewall Software

What licenses do I need when I have 2 appliances in High Availability mode

For Active-Active mode:

• Each appliance requires its own subscriptions and the active subscriptions must match on both appliances.
  
• Sandstorm does not affect the HA setup regardless of the expiry date in each device.

For Active-Passive mode:

• Only the Active appliance requires subscriptions and SF-OS will ensure that the Passive appliance has a copy of those subscriptions, so it can take on processing if the Active appliance fails.
  It is therefore vital that the subscriptions are activated on the intended Active appliance and one has to ensure that HA is enabled only from the appliance which has a valid subscription.
• If a Software/Virtual device is used, you need to purchase only one Base license and once that Serial Number is registered, SF-OS will manage the creation of the Passive appliance; there is no need to purchase a separate Base Firewall license for the Passive device or a separate serial number.

Note: Active/Passive is not yet available for XG in Azure.

Related information

• XG Firewall: Licensing guide
• XG Firewall: FAQ on activating XG license keys
• XG Firewall: FAQ on the migration of Sophos SG, Cyberoam NG, and iA licenses
• XG Firewall: FAQ on new registration
• XG Firewall: Activation and registration error messages

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