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High Availability Software + Appliance

ChrisBell

Hi there,

Has anybody had any luck getting HA to work with a physical and software unit in the cluster?

Is this a supported feature?

Cheers,

Chris



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  • Hi Chris.

    Not supported. Your hardware needs to be identical, down to the hardware revision of the appliance, for a working cluster.

    You can, however, have a hardware with Sophos UTM software installed sitting around and restore a backup from your hardware appliance on it in case of a disaster. You'll need to make sure to keep regular backups of your UTM appliance and that this backup UTM is always updated to the same version as your hardware appliance. It also needs at least the same number of network interfaces as your hardware appliance for a fast recovery, otherwise you might have some issues with network interfaces being swaped when you restore a backup from an appliance. If you can do that, you can recover from a failure in minutes, but it will be a very manual intervention. Test it out, map which hardware network interfaces get assigned to which ethX after a restore, and you can have at least a plan for a rainy day.

    My two cents: get a second appliance. It will pay itself very quickly if you have a business need that requires no interruption.

    EDIT: there's the matter of the license here. Your software install will not be activated by the license from the hardware appliance backup. You'll need to get a trial license from your Sophos partner or install the UTM software on the hardware right before restoring the backup. That will give you 30 days to work things out, and it means keeping an updated ISO at hand.

    EDIT 2: sorry about that link, I was replying on my mobile and it got there somehow

    Again, get a second appliance. The cost is not worth the trouble of keeping an alternative.

    Regards,

    Giovani

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  • Hi Chris.

    Not supported. Your hardware needs to be identical, down to the hardware revision of the appliance, for a working cluster.

    You can, however, have a hardware with Sophos UTM software installed sitting around and restore a backup from your hardware appliance on it in case of a disaster. You'll need to make sure to keep regular backups of your UTM appliance and that this backup UTM is always updated to the same version as your hardware appliance. It also needs at least the same number of network interfaces as your hardware appliance for a fast recovery, otherwise you might have some issues with network interfaces being swaped when you restore a backup from an appliance. If you can do that, you can recover from a failure in minutes, but it will be a very manual intervention. Test it out, map which hardware network interfaces get assigned to which ethX after a restore, and you can have at least a plan for a rainy day.

    My two cents: get a second appliance. It will pay itself very quickly if you have a business need that requires no interruption.

    EDIT: there's the matter of the license here. Your software install will not be activated by the license from the hardware appliance backup. You'll need to get a trial license from your Sophos partner or install the UTM software on the hardware right before restoring the backup. That will give you 30 days to work things out, and it means keeping an updated ISO at hand.

    EDIT 2: sorry about that link, I was replying on my mobile and it got there somehow

    Again, get a second appliance. The cost is not worth the trouble of keeping an alternative.

    Regards,

    Giovani

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