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Updated:April 5, 2019
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First Published: July 13, 2015
Deploy a Cluster for ASA on the Firepower 4100/9300
Clustering lets you group multiple ASA units together as a single logical device. A cluster provides all the convenience of
a single device (management, integration into a network) while achieving the increased throughput and redundancy of multiple
devices. Clustering is also supported on ASA hardware models, but because the Firepower 4100/9300 requires separate configuration in FXOS, this document focuses on the entire configuration across FXOS and ASA.
This document covers the latest ASA version features; see History for ASA Clustering on the Firepower 4100/9300 for details about feature changes. If you are on an old version of software, refer to the procedures in the FXOS configuration
guide and ASA configuration guide for your version.
Benefit of this Integration
The FXOS platform lets you run multiple logical devices, including the ASA. Deploying standalone and clustered logical devices
is easy for both intra-chassis clusters (for the Firepower 9300) and inter-chassis clusters. When you deploy a cluster from
FXOS, you pre-configure the ASA bootstrap configuration so very little customization is required within the ASA application.
You can also add additional cluster members by exporting the cluster configuration in FXOS.
Integrated Products
This table lists the products required for this integration.
Table 1. Integrated Products for Clustering
Products
Function
Minimum Version
Required?
Firepower 4100 or 9300
Hardware platform to run the ASA
FXOS 1.1.2
Required
Firepower Chassis Manager
FXOS GUI device manager
Firepower Chassis Manager 1.1.2
Optional; you can alternatively use the CLI
ASA
Firewall application
ASA 9.4(1.152)
Required
ASDM
ASA GUI device manager
ASDM 7.4(3)
Optional; you can alternatively use the CLI
Workflow
This workflow uses Firepower Chassis Manager on FXOS and ASDM on the ASA to complete your clustering deployment.
Procedure
Step 1
FXOS prerequisites:
Configure Smart Licensing. Smart licensing requires you to configure an NTP server (or at least accurate manual time) and
DNS.
Step 2
FXOS tasks:
FXOS: Configure Interfaces. Configure one management and all data interfaces that you intend to assign to the ASA. The cluster interface is defined
by default as Port-Channel 48, but for inter-chassis clustering, you need to add member interfaces.
(Optional) ASA: Customize the Cluster Configuration. Customize or enable many clustering features including inter-site features and distributed site-to-site VPN.
About Clustering on the Firepower 4100/9300 Chassis
When you deploy a cluster on the Firepower 4100/9300 chassis, it does the following:
Creates a
cluster-control link (by default, port-channel 48) for node-to-node
communication.
For a cluster isolated to security modules within one Firepower 9300 chassis, this link
utilizes the Firepower 9300 backplane for cluster communications.
For clustering with multiple
chassis, you need to manually assign physical interface(s) to this EtherChannel
for communications between chassis.
Creates the
cluster bootstrap configuration within the application.
When you deploy the cluster, the chassis supervisor pushes a minimal bootstrap configuration to each unit that includes the
cluster name, cluster control link interface, and other cluster settings. Some parts of the bootstrap configuration may be user-configurable within the application if you want to customize your clustering
environment.
Assigns data
interfaces to the cluster as
Spanned
interfaces.
For a cluster isolated to security modules within one Firepower 9300 chassis, spanned
interfaces are not limited to EtherChannels, like it is for
clustering with multiple chassis. The Firepower 9300 supervisor uses EtherChannel technology internally to load-balance traffic to
multiple modules on a shared interface, so any data interface type works for
Spanned mode. For
clustering with multiple chassis, you must use Spanned EtherChannels for all
data interfaces.
Note
Individual interfaces are not supported, with the exception of a management interface.
Assigns a management interface to all units in the cluster.
See the following sections for more information about clustering.
Bootstrap
Configuration
When you deploy the cluster, the Firepower 4100/9300 chassis supervisor pushes a minimal bootstrap configuration to each unit that
includes the cluster name, cluster control link interface, and other cluster settings.
Some parts of the bootstrap configuration are
user-configurable if you want to customize your clustering environment.
Cluster
Members
Cluster members work together to accomplish the sharing of the security policy and traffic flows.
One member of the cluster is the control unit. The control unit is determined
automatically. All other members are data units.
You must perform all configuration on the control unit only; the configuration is then replicated
to the data units.
Some features do not scale in a cluster, and the control unit handles all traffic for those
features. See Centralized Features for Clustering.
Cluster Control
Link
The cluster-control link is an EtherChannel (port-channel 48) for unit-to-unit communication. For intra-chassis clustering,
this link utilizes the Firepower 9300 backplane for cluster communications. For inter-chassis clustering, you need to manually assign physical interface(s) to this EtherChannel on the Firepower 4100/9300 chassis for communications between chassis.
For a 2-chassis inter-chassis cluster, do not directly-connect the cluster control link from one chassis to the other chassis.
If you directly connect the interfaces, then when one unit fails, the cluster control link fails, and thus the remaining healthy
unit fails. If you connect the cluster control link through a switch, then the cluster control link remains up for the healthy
unit.
Cluster control link traffic includes both control and data
traffic.
Control traffic includes:
Control node election.
Configuration replication.
Health monitoring.
Data traffic includes:
State replication.
Connection ownership queries and data packet forwarding.
See the following sections for more information about the cluster control link.
Size the Cluster Control Link
If possible, you should size the cluster control link to match the
expected throughput of each chassis so the cluster control link can handle the
worst-case scenarios.
Cluster control link traffic is comprised mainly of state update
and forwarded packets. The amount of traffic at any given time on the cluster control
link varies. The amount of forwarded traffic depends on the load-balancing efficacy or
whether there is a lot of traffic for centralized features. For example:
NAT results in poor load balancing of connections, and the
need to rebalance all returning traffic to the correct units.
AAA for network access is a centralized feature, so all
traffic is forwarded to the control unit.
When membership changes, the cluster needs to rebalance a
large number of connections, thus temporarily using a large amount of cluster
control link bandwidth.
A higher-bandwidth cluster control link helps the cluster to
converge faster when there are membership changes and prevents throughput bottlenecks.
Note
If your cluster has large amounts of asymmetric (rebalanced)
traffic, then you should increase the cluster control link size.
Cluster Control Link Redundancy
We recommend using an EtherChannel for the
cluster control link, so that you can pass traffic on multiple links in the EtherChannel
while still achieving redundancy.
The following diagram shows how to use an EtherChannel as a cluster
control link in a Virtual Switching System (VSS), Virtual Port Channel (vPC), StackWise,
or StackWise Virtual environment. All links in the EtherChannel are active. When the
switch is part of a redundant system, then you can connect firewall interfaces within
the same EtherChannel to separate switches in the redundant system. The switch
interfaces are members of the same EtherChannel port-channel interface, because the
separate switches act like a single switch. Note that this EtherChannel is device-local,
not a Spanned EtherChannel.
Cluster Control Link
Reliability
To ensure cluster control link functionality, be sure the
round-trip time (RTT) between units is less than 20 ms. This maximum latency enhances
compatibility with cluster members installed at different geographical sites. To check
your latency, perform a ping on the cluster control link between units.
The cluster control link must be reliable, with no out-of-order or
dropped packets; for example, for inter-site deployment, you should use a dedicated
link.
Cluster Control Link Network
The Firepower 4100/9300 chassis auto-generates the cluster control link interface IP address for each unit based on the chassis ID and slot ID: 127.2.chassis_id.slot_id.You can customize this IP address when you deploy the cluster. The cluster control link network cannot include any routers between units; only Layer 2 switching is allowed. For inter-site traffic, Cisco recommends using Overlay Transport Virtualization (OTV).
Cluster
Interfaces
For a cluster isolated to security modules within one Firepower 9300 chassis, you can assign both
physical interfaces or EtherChannels (also known as port channels) to the cluster.
Interfaces assigned to the cluster are Spanned interfaces that load-balance traffic
across all members of the cluster.
For clustering with multiple chassis, you can only
assign data EtherChannels to the cluster. These Spanned EtherChannels include the same
member interfaces on each chassis; on the upstream switch, all of these interfaces are
included in a single EtherChannel, so the switch does not know that it is connected to
multiple devices.
Individual interfaces
are not supported, with the exception of a management interface.
Connecting to a Redundant Switch System
We recommend connecting EtherChannels to a redundant switch system such as a VSS, vPC, StackWise,
or StackWise Virtual system to provide redundancy for your interfaces.
Configuration
Replication
All nodes in the cluster share a single configuration. You can only make
configuration changes on the control node (with the exception of the bootstrap
configuration), and changes are automatically synced to all other nodes in the
cluster.
Secure
Firewall ASA Cluster Management
One of the benefits of using ASA clustering is the ease of management. This section describes how to manage the cluster.
Management Network
We recommend connecting all units to a single management network. This network is separate from the cluster control link.
Management
Interface
You must assign a
Management type interface to the cluster. This interface is a special
individual interface as opposed to a Spanned interface. The management
interface lets you connect directly to each unit.
The Main cluster IP address is a fixed address for the cluster that always belongs to the current
control unit. You also configure a range of addresses so that each unit, including the
current control unit, can use a Local address from the range. The Main cluster IP
address provides consistent management access to an address; when a control unit
changes, the Main cluster IP address moves to the new control unit, so management of the
cluster continues seamlessly.
For example, you can manage the cluster by connecting to the Main cluster IP address, which is
always attached to the current control unit. To manage an individual member, you can
connect to the Local IP address.
For outbound management traffic such as TFTP or syslog, each unit, including the control unit,
uses the Local IP address to connect to the server.
Control Unit Management Vs. Data Unit Management
All management and monitoring can take place on the control node. From
the control node, you can check runtime statistics, resource usage, or other
monitoring information of all nodes. You can also issue a command to all nodes
in the cluster, and replicate the console messages from data nodes to the
control node.
You can monitor data nodes directly if desired. Although also available
from the control node, you can perform file management on data nodes (including
backing up the configuration and updating images). The following functions are
not available from the control node:
Monitoring per-node cluster-specific statistics.
Syslog monitoring per node (except for syslogs sent to the console when
console replication is enabled).
SNMP
NetFlow
Crypto Key Replication
When you create a crypto key on the control node, the key is replicated
to all data nodes. If you have an SSH session to the Main cluster IP address,
you will be disconnected if the control node fails. The new control node uses
the same key for SSH connections, so that you do not need to update the cached
SSH host key when you reconnect to the new control node.
ASDM Connection
Certificate IP Address Mismatch
By default, a self-signed certificate is used for the ASDM connection
based on the Local IP address. If you connect to the Main cluster IP address
using ASDM, then a warning message about a mismatched IP address might appear
because the certificate uses the Local IP address, and not the Main cluster IP
address. You can ignore the message and establish the ASDM connection. However,
to avoid this type of warning, you can enroll a certificate that contains the
Main cluster IP address and all the Local IP addresses from the IP address pool.
You can then use this certificate for each cluster member. See https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/security/asdm/identity-cert/cert-install.html for more information.
Spanned EtherChannels (Recommended)
You can group one or more interfaces per chassis into an EtherChannel that
spans all chassis in the cluster. The EtherChannel aggregates the traffic across
all the available active interfaces in the channel. A Spanned EtherChannel can
be configured in both routed and transparent firewall modes. In routed mode, the
EtherChannel is configured as a routed interface with a single IP address. In
transparent mode, the IP address is assigned to the BVI, not to the bridge group
member interface. The EtherChannel inherently provides load balancing as part of
basic operation.
Inter-Site Clustering
For inter-site installations, you can take advantage of ASA clustering as long as you follow the recommended guidelines.
You can configure
each cluster chassis to belong to a separate site ID.
Site IDs work with site-specific MAC addresses and IP
addresses. Packets egressing the cluster use a site-specific MAC
address and IP address, while
packets received by the cluster use a global MAC address and IP address. This feature
prevents the switches from learning the same global MAC address from both sites
on two different ports, which causes MAC flapping; instead, they only learn the
site MAC address. Site-specific MAC addresses and IP address are supported for
routed mode using Spanned EtherChannels only.
Site IDs are also used to enable flow mobility using LISP
inspection, director localization to
improve performance and reduce round-trip time latency for inter-site
clustering for data centers, and site redundancy for
connections where a backup owner of a traffic flow is always at a different
site from the owner.
See the following sections for more information about inter-site clustering:
Requirements and Prerequisites for Clustering on the Firepower 4100/9300 Chassis
Maximum Clustering Units Per Model
Firepower 4100—16 chassis
Firepower 9300—16 modules. For example, you can use 1 module in 16 chassis, or 2 modules in 8 chassis, or any combination
that provides a maximum of 16 modules.
Hardware and Software Requirements for Inter-Chassis Clustering
All chassis in a cluster:
For the Firepower 4100: All chassis must be the same model. For the Firepower 9300: All security modules must be the same type. For example, if you use clustering, all modules in the Firepower 9300 must be
SM-40s. You can have different quantities of installed security modules in each chassis, although all modules present in the
chassis must belong to the cluster including any empty slots.
Must run the identical FXOS and
application software except at the time of an image upgrade. Mismatched
software versions can lead to poor performance, so be sure to upgrade
all nodes in the same maintenance window.
Must include the same interface configuration for interfaces you assign to the cluster, such
as the same Management interface, EtherChannels, active interfaces,
speed and duplex, and so on. You can use different network module types
on the chassis as long as the capacity matches for the same interface
IDs and interfaces can successfully bundle in the same spanned
EtherChannel. Note that all data interfaces must be EtherChannels in
clusters with multiple chassis. If you change the interfaces in FXOS
after you enable clustering (by adding or removing interface modules, or
configuring EtherChannels, for example), then perform the same changes
on each chassis, starting with the data nodes, and ending with the
control node. Note that if you remove an
interface in FXOS, the ASA configuration retains the related
commands so that you can make any necessary adjustments; removing an
interface from the configuration can have wide effects. You can
manually remove the old interface configuration.
Must use the same NTP server. Do not set the time manually.
ASA: Each FXOS chassis must be registered with the License Authority or satellite server. There is no extra cost for data
nodes. For permanent license reservation, you must purchase separate licenses for each chassis. For threat
defense, all licensing is handled by the management center.
Switch Requirements
Be sure to complete the switch configuration and successfully
connect all the EtherChannels from the chassis to the switch(es) before you
configure clustering on the
Firepower 4100/9300 chassis.
Sizing the Data Center Interconnect for Inter-Site Clustering
You should reserve bandwidth on the data center interconnect
(DCI) for cluster control link traffic equivalent to the following calculation:
If the number of members differs at each site, use the larger
number for your calculation. The minimum bandwidth for the DCI should not be
less than the size of the cluster control link for one member.
For example:
For 4 members at 2 sites:
4 cluster members total
2 members at each site
5 Gbps cluster control link per member
Reserved DCI bandwidth = 5 Gbps (2/2 x 5 Gbps).
For 6 members at 3 sites, the size increases:
6 cluster members total
3 members at site 1, 2 members at site 2, and 1 member at site 3
10 Gbps cluster control link per member
Reserved DCI bandwidth = 15 Gbps (3/2 x 10 Gbps).
For 2 members at 2 sites:
2 cluster members total
1 member at each site
10 Gbps cluster control link per member
Reserved DCI bandwidth = 10 Gbps (1/2 x 10 Gbps = 5 Gbps; but
the minimum bandwidth should not be less than the size of the cluster control
link (10 Gbps)).
Licenses for Clustering on the Firepower 4100/9300 Chassis
Smart Software Manager Regular and On-Prem
The clustering feature itself does not require any licenses. To use Strong Encryption and
other optional licenses, each Firepower 4100/9300 chassis must be registered with the License Authority or Smart Software Manager
Regular and On-Prem server. There is no extra cost for data units.
The Strong Encryption license is automatically enabled for qualified customers when you apply the registration token. When
using the token, each chassis must have the same encryption license. For the optional Strong Encryption (3DES/AES) feature
license enabled in the ASA configuration, see below.
In the ASA license configuration, you can only configure smart licensing on the control unit.
The configuration is replicated to the data units, but for some licenses, they
do not use the configuration; it remains in a cached state, and only the control
unit requests the license. The licenses are aggregated into a single cluster
license that is shared by the cluster units, and this aggregated license is also
cached on the data units to be used if one of them becomes the control unit in
the future. Each license type is managed as follows:
Essentials—Only the control unit requests the Essentials license from the server, and both units can use it due to license aggregation.
Context—Only the control unit requests the Context license from the server. The Essentials license includes 10 contexts by default and is present on all cluster members. The value from each unit’s Essentials license plus the value of the Context license on the control unit are combined up to the platform limit in an aggregated
cluster license. For example:
You have 6 Firepower 9300 modules in the cluster. The Essentials license includes 10 contexts; for 6 units, these licenses add up to 60 contexts. You configure an additional 20-Context license
on the control unit. Therefore, the aggregated cluster license includes 80 contexts. Because the platform limit for one module
is 250, the combined license allows a maximum of 250 contexts; the 80 contexts are within the limit. Therefore, you can configure
up to 80 contexts on the control unit; each data unit will also have 80 contexts through configuration replication.
You have 3 Firepower 4112 units in the cluster. The Essentials license includes 10 contexts; for 3 units, these licenses add up to 30 contexts. You configure an additional 250-Context
license on the control unit. Therefore, the aggregated cluster license includes 280 contexts. Because the platform limit for
one unit is 250, the combined license allows a maximum of 250 contexts; the 280 contexts are over the limit. Therefore, you
can only configure up to 250 contexts on the control unit; each data unit will also have 250 contexts through configuration
replication. In this case, you should only configure the control unit Context license to be 220 contexts.
Carrier—Required for Distributed S2S VPN. This license is a per-unit entitlement, and each
unit requests its own license from the server.
Strong Encryption (3DES) (for pre-2.3.0 Cisco Smart Software Manager On-Prem deployment,
or for tracking purposes)—This license is a per-unit entitlement, and
each unit requests its own license from the server.
If a new control unit is elected, the new control unit continues to use the aggregated license.
It also uses the cached license configuration to re-request the control unit
license. When the old control unit rejoins the cluster as a data unit, it
releases the control unit license entitlement. Before the data unit releases the
license, the control unit's license might be in a non-compliant state if there
are no available licenses in the account. The retained license is valid for 30
days, but if it is still non-compliant after the grace period, you will not be
able to make configuration changes to features requiring special licenses;
operation is otherwise unaffected. The new active unit sends an entitlement
authorization renewal request every 12 hours until the license is compliant. You
should refrain from making configuration changes until the license requests are
completely processed. If a unit leaves the cluster, the cached control
configuration is removed, while the per-unit entitlements are retained. In
particular, you would need to re-request the Context license on non-cluster
units.
Permanent License Reservation
For permanent license reservation, you must purchase separate licenses for each
chassis and enable the licenses before you configure clustering.
Licenses for Distributed S2S VPN
A Carrier license is required for Distributed S2S VPN, on each member of the cluster.
Each VPN connection requires two Other VPN licensed sessions (the Other VPN license is part of the Essentials license), one for the active session and one for the backup session. The maximum VPN session capacity of the cluster can
be no more than half of the licensed capacity due to using two licenses for each session.
Clustering Guidelines and Limitations
Switches for Clustering
Make sure connected switches match the MTU for both cluster data interfaces and the cluster
control link interface. You should configure the cluster control link
interface MTU to be at least 100 bytes higher than the data interface
MTU, so make sure to configure the cluster control link connecting
switch appropriately. Because the cluster control link traffic includes
data packet forwarding, the cluster control link needs to accommodate
the entire size of a data packet plus cluster traffic overhead.
For Cisco IOS XR systems, if you want to set a non-default MTU, set the IOS XR interface
MTU to be 14 bytes higher than the cluster device MTU. Otherwise, OSPF
adjacency peering attempts may fail unless the mtu-ignore option
is used. Note that the cluster device MTU should match the IOS XR
IPv4 MTU. This adjustment is not required for Cisco Catalyst
and Cisco Nexus switches.
On the switch(es)
for the cluster control link interfaces, you can optionally enable Spanning
Tree PortFast on the switch ports connected to the cluster unit to speed up the
join process for new units.
On the switch, we recommend that you use one of the following
EtherChannel load-balancing algorithms: source-dest-ip or source-dest-ip-port
(see the Cisco Nexus OS and Cisco IOS-XE port-channel load-balance command). Do not use a vlan keyword in the load-balance algorithm
because it can cause unevenly distributed traffic to the devices in a
cluster. Do not
change the load-balancing algorithm from the default on the
cluster device.
If you change the load-balancing algorithm of the EtherChannel
on the switch, the EtherChannel interface on the switch temporarily stops
forwarding traffic, and the Spanning Tree Protocol restarts. There will be a
delay before traffic starts flowing again.
Switches on the cluster control link path should not verify the L4 checksum. Redirected traffic over the cluster control link
does not have a correct L4 checksum. Switches that verify the L4 checksum could cause traffic to be dropped.
Port-channel bundling downtime should not exceed the configured
keepalive interval.
On Supervisor 2T EtherChannels, the default hash distribution algorithm is adaptive. To avoid asymmetric traffic in a VSS
design, change the hash algorithm on the port-channel connected to the cluster device to fixed:
Do not change the algorithm globally; you may want to take
advantage of the adaptive algorithm for the VSS peer link.
Unlike ASA hardware clusters, Firepower 4100/9300 clusters support LACP graceful convergence. So for the platform, you can leave LACP graceful convergence enabled on connected Cisco Nexus switches.
When you see slow bundling of a Spanned
EtherChannel on the switch, you can enable LACP rate fast for an
individual interface on the switch. FXOS EtherChannels have the LACP
rate set to fast by default. Note that some switches, such as the Nexus
series, do not support LACP rate fast when performing in-service
software upgrades (ISSUs), so we do not recommend using ISSUs with
clustering.
EtherChannels for Clustering
In Catalyst 3750-X Cisco IOS software versions earlier than 15.1(1)S2,
the cluster unit did not support connecting an EtherChannel to a switch
stack. With default switch settings, if the cluster unit EtherChannel is
connected cross stack, and if the control unit switch is powered down,
then the EtherChannel connected to the remaining switch will not come
up. To improve compatibility, set the stack-mac persistent
timer command to a large enough value to account
for reload time; for example, 8 minutes or 0 for indefinite. Or, you can
upgrade to more a more stable switch software version, such as
15.1(1)S2.
Spanned vs. Device-Local EtherChannel Configuration—Be sure to
configure the switch appropriately for Spanned EtherChannels vs. Device-local
EtherChannels.
Spanned EtherChannels—For cluster unit
Spanned EtherChannels, which span across all members of the
cluster, the interfaces are combined into a single EtherChannel on the switch.
Make sure each interface is in the same channel group on the switch.
Device-local EtherChannels—For cluster unit
Device-local
EtherChannels including any EtherChannels configured for
the cluster control link, be sure to configure discrete EtherChannels on the
switch; do not combine multiple cluster unit EtherChannels into one
EtherChannel on the switch.
Inter-Site Clustering
See the following guidelines for inter-site clustering:
The cluster control link latency must be less than 20 ms
round-trip time (RTT).
The cluster control link must be reliable, with no out-of-order
or dropped packets; for example, you should use a dedicated link.
Do not configure connection rebalancing; you do not want
connections rebalanced to cluster members at a different site.
The ASA does not encrypt forwarded data traffic on the cluster control link
because it is a dedicated link, even when used on a Data Center
Interconnect (DCI). If you use Overlay Transport Virtualization (OTV),
or are otherwise extending the cluster control link outside of the local
administrative domain, you can configure encryption on your border
routers such as 802.1AE MacSec over OTV.
The cluster implementation does not differentiate between members at
multiple sites for incoming connections; therefore, connection roles for
a given connection may span across sites. This is expected behavior. However, if you enable
director localization, the local director role is always chosen from
the same site as the connection owner (according to site ID). Also,
the local director chooses a new owner at the same site if the
original owner fails (Note: if the traffic is asymmetric across
sites, and there is continuous traffic from the remote site after
the original owner fails, then a node from the remote site might
become the new owner if it receives a data packet within the
re-hosting window.).
For director
localization, the following traffic types do not support localization: NAT or
PAT traffic; SCTP-inspected traffic; Fragmentation owner query.
For transparent mode, if the cluster is placed between a pair of
inside and outside routers (AKA North-South insertion), you must ensure that
both inside routers share a MAC address, and also that both outside routers
share a MAC address. When a cluster member at site 1 forwards a connection to a
member at site 2, the destination MAC address is preserved. The packet will
only reach the router at site 2 if the MAC address is the same as the router at
site 1.
For
transparent mode, if the cluster is placed between data networks and the
gateway router at each site for firewalling between internal networks (AKA
East-West insertion), then each gateway router should use a First Hop
Redundancy Protocol (FHRP) such as HSRP to provide identical virtual IP and MAC
address destinations at each site. The data VLANs are extended across the sites
using Overlay Transport Virtualization (OTV), or something similar. You need to
create filters to prevent traffic that is destined to the local gateway router
from being sent over the DCI to the other site. If the gateway router becomes
unreachable at one site, you need to remove any filters so traffic can
successfully reach the other site’s gateway.
For transparent mode, if the cluster is connected to an HSRP router, you must add the
router HSRP MAC address as a static MAC address table entry on the ASA. When adjacent routers use HSRP, traffic destined to the
HSRP IP address will be sent to the HSRP MAC Address, but return traffic
will be sourced from the MAC address of a particular router's interface
in the HSRP pair. Therefore, the ASA MAC address table is typically only updated when the ASA ARP table entry for the HSRP IP address expires, and the ASA sends an ARP request and receives a reply. Because the ASA’s ARP table entries expire after 14400 seconds by default, but the
MAC address table entry expires after 300 seconds by default, a static
MAC address entry is required to avoid MAC address table expiration
traffic drops.
For routed mode using Spanned EtherChannel, configure site-specific MAC addresses. Extend the
data VLANs across the sites using OTV, or something similar. You need to
create filters to prevent traffic that is destined to the global MAC
address from being sent over the DCI to the other site. If the cluster
becomes unreachable at one site, you need to remove any filters so
traffic can successfully reach the other site’s cluster nodes. Dynamic
routing is not supported when an inter-site cluster acts as the first
hop router for an extended segment.
Additional Guidelines
When significant topology changes occur (such as adding or removing an EtherChannel
interface, enabling or disabling an interface on the Firepower 4100/9300 chassis or the switch, adding an additional switch to form a VSS, vPC, StackWise,
or StackWise Virtual) you should disable the health check feature, and also
disable interface monitoring for the disabled interfaces . When the topology
change is complete, and the configuration change is synced to all units, you
can re-enable the health check feature.
When adding a unit to an existing cluster, or when reloading a unit, there will be a temporary, limited packet/connection
drop; this is expected behavior. In some cases, the dropped packets can hang connections; for example, dropping a FIN/ACK
packet for an FTP connection will make the FTP client hang. In this case, you need to reestablish the FTP connection.
If you use a Windows 2003 server connected to a Spanned EtherChannel interface, when the syslog server port is down, and the
server does not throttle ICMP error messages, then large numbers of ICMP messages are sent back to the cluster. These messages
can result in some units of the cluster experiencing high CPU, which can affect performance. We recommend that you throttle
ICMP error messages.
We recommend connecting EtherChannels to a VSS, vPC, StackWise, or StackWise Virtual for
redundancy.
Within a
chassis, you cannot cluster some security modules and run other security
modules in standalone mode; you must include all security modules in the
cluster.
Defaults
The cluster health check feature is enabled by default with the holdtime of 3 seconds. Interface health monitoring is enabled
on all interfaces by default.
Connection rebalancing is disabled by default. If you enable connection rebalancing, the default time between load information
exchanges is 5 seconds.
The cluster auto-rejoin feature for a failed cluster control link is set to unlimited attempts every 5 minutes.
The cluster auto-rejoin feature for a failed data interface is set to 3 attempts every 5 minutes, with the increasing interval
set to 2.
Connection replication delay of 5 seconds is enabled by default for HTTP traffic.
Configure Clustering
on the
Firepower 4100/9300 Chassis
You can easily
deploy the cluster from the
Firepower 4100/9300 chassis supervisor. All initial configuration is automatically generated for
each unit. This section describes the default bootstrap configuration and
optional customization you can perform on the ASA. This section also describes
how to manage cluster members from within the ASA. You can also manage cluster
membership from the
Firepower 4100/9300 chassis. See the
Firepower 4100/9300 chassis documentation for more information.
For inter-chassis clustering, all data interfaces must be Spanned EtherChannels with at least one member interface. Add the
same EtherChannels on each chassis. Combine the member interfaces from all cluster units into a single EtherChannel on the
switch. See Clustering Guidelines and Limitations for more information about EtherChannels for inter-chassis clustering.
The management interface is required. Note that this management interface is not the same as the chassis management interface
that is used only for chassis management (in FXOS, you might see the chassis management interface displayed as MGMT, management0,
or other similar names).
For inter-chassis clustering, add the same Management interface on each chassis.
For inter-chassis clustering, add a member interface to the cluster control link EtherChannel (by default, port-channel 48).
See Add an EtherChannel (Port Channel).
Do not add a member interface for intra-chassis clustering. If you add a member, the chassis assumes this cluster will be
inter-chassis, and will only allow you to use Spanned EtherChannels, for example.
On the Interfaces tab, the port-channel 48 cluster type interface shows the Operation State as failed if it does not include any member interfaces. For intra-chassis clustering, this EtherChannel does not require any member
interfaces, and you can ignore this Operational State.
Add the same member interfaces on each chassis. The cluster control link is a device-local EtherChannel on each chassis. Use
separate EtherChannels on the switch per device. See Clustering Guidelines and Limitations for more information about EtherChannels for inter-chassis clustering.
Configure a Physical Interface
You can physically enable and disable interfaces, as well as set the interface speed and duplex. To use an interface, it must
be physically enabled in FXOS and logically enabled in the application.
Note
For QSFPH40G-CUxM, auto-negotiation is always enabled by default and you cannot disable it.
Before you begin
Interfaces that are already a member of an EtherChannel cannot be modified individually. Be sure to configure settings before
you add it to the EtherChannel.
Procedure
Step 1
Choose Interfaces to open the Interfaces page.
The All Interfaces page shows a visual representation of the currently installed interfaces at the top of the page and provides a listing of
the installed interfaces in the table below.
Step 2
Click Edit in the row for the interface you want to edit to open the Edit Interface dialog box.
Step 3
To enable the interface, check the Enable check box. To disable the interface, uncheck the Enable check box.
Step 4
Choose the interface Type:
Data
Mgmt
Cluster—Do not choose the
Cluster type; by default, the cluster
control link is automatically created on Port-channel 48.
Step 5
(Optional) Choose the speed of the interface from the Speed drop-down list.
Step 6
(Optional) If your interface supports Auto Negotiation, click the Yes or No radio button.
Step 7
(Optional) Choose the duplex of the interface from the Duplex drop-down list.
Step 8
(Optional) Explicitly configure Debounce Time (ms). Enter a value between 0-15000 milli-seconds.
Step 9
Click OK.
Add an EtherChannel (Port Channel)
An EtherChannel (also known as a port channel) can include up to 16 member interfaces of the
same media type and capacity, and must be set to the same speed and duplex. The
media type can be either RJ-45 or SFP; SFPs of different types (copper and fiber)
can be mixed. You cannot mix interface capacities (for example 1GB and 10GB
interfaces) by setting the speed to be lower on the larger-capacity interface. The
Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) aggregates interfaces by exchanging the
Link Aggregation Control Protocol Data Units (LACPDUs) between two network
devices.
You can configure each physical Data interface in an EtherChannel to be:
Active—Sends and receives LACP updates. An active EtherChannel can establish connectivity with either an active or a passive
EtherChannel. You should use the active mode unless you need to minimize the amount of LACP traffic.
On—The EtherChannel is always on, and LACP is not used. An “on” EtherChannel can only establish a connection with another
“on” EtherChannel.
Note
It may take up to three minutes for an EtherChannel to come up to an operational state if you change its mode from On to Active
or from Active to On.
Non-data interfaces only support active mode.
LACP coordinates the automatic addition and deletion of links to the EtherChannel without user intervention. It also handles
misconfigurations and checks that both ends of member interfaces are connected to the correct channel group. “On” mode cannot use standby interfaces in the channel group when an interface goes down, and the connectivity and configurations
are not checked.
When the Firepower 4100/9300 chassis creates an EtherChannel, the EtherChannel stays in a Suspended state for Active LACP mode or a Down state for On LACP mode until you assign it to a logical device, even if the physical link is up. The EtherChannel will be brought out of this Suspended state in the following situations:
The EtherChannel is added as a data or management interface for a standalone logical device
The EtherChannel is added as a management interface or cluster control link for a logical device that is part of a cluster
The EtherChannel is added as a data interface for a logical device that is part of a cluster and at least one unit has joined
the cluster
Note that the EtherChannel does not come up until you assign it to a logical device. If the EtherChannel is removed from the
logical device or the logical device is deleted, the EtherChannel will revert to a Suspendedor Down state.
Procedure
Step 1
Choose
Interfaces to open the Interfaces page.
The All Interfaces page shows a visual representation of the currently installed interfaces at the top of the page and provides a listing of
the installed interfaces in the table below.
Step 2
Click
Add Port
Channel above the interfaces table to open the
Add Port
Channel dialog box.
Step 3
Enter an ID for
the port channel in the
Port
Channel ID field. Valid values are between 1 and 47.
Port-channel 48 is reserved for the cluster control link when you deploy a clustered logical device. If you do not want to
use Port-channel 48 for the cluster control link, you can delete it and configure a Cluster type EtherChannel with a different
ID.You can add multiple Cluster type EtherChannels and add VLAN subinterfaces for use with multi-instance clustering. For intra-chassis clustering, do not assign any interfaces to the Cluster EtherChannel.
Step 4
To enable the
port channel, check the
Enable check box. To disable the port channel,
uncheck the
Enable check box.
Step 5
Choose the interface Type:
Data
Mgmt
Cluster
Step 6
Set the required Admin Speed for the member interfaces
from the drop-down list.
If you add a member interface that is not at the specified speed, it will not
successfully join the port channel.
Step 7
For Data interfaces, choose the LACP port-channel Mode, Active or On.
For non-Data interfaces, the mode is always active.
Step 8
Set the required Admin Duplex for the member interfaces,
Full Duplex or Half
Duplex.
If you add a member interface that is configured with the specified duplex,
it will not successfully join the port channel.
Step 9
To add an interface to the port channel, select the interface in the
Available Interface list and click Add
Interface to move the interface to the Member ID list.
You can add up to 16 member interfaces of the same media type and capacity.
The member interfaces must be set to the same speed and duplex, and must
match the speed and duplex that you configured for this port channel. The
media type can be either RJ-45 or SFP; SFPs of different types (copper and
fiber) can be mixed. You cannot mix interface capacities (for example 1GB
and 10GB interfaces) by setting the speed to be lower on the larger-capacity
interface.
Tip
You can add multiple interfaces at one time. To select multiple
individual interfaces, click on the desired interfaces while holding
down the Ctrl key. To select a range of
interfaces, select the first interface in the range, and then, while
holding down the Shift key, click to select the
last interface in the range.
Step 10
To remove an
interface from the port channel, click the
Delete button to the right of the interface in the
Member ID list.
Step 11
Click
OK.
FXOS: Add an ASA Cluster
You can add a single Firepower 9300 chassis as an intra-chassis cluster, or add multiple chassis for inter-chassis clustering. For inter-chassis clustering, you must configure each chassis separately. Add the cluster on one chassis; you can then copy the bootstrap configuration from the first chassis to the next chassis for ease of deployment
Create an ASA Cluster
Set the scope to the image version.
You can easily deploy the cluster from the Firepower 4100/9300 chassis supervisor. All initial configuration is automatically generated for each unit.
For clustering on
multiple chassis, you must configure each chassis separately. Deploy the cluster on
one chassis; you can then copy the bootstrap configuration from the first chassis to
the next chassis for ease of deployment.
In a Firepower 9300 chassis, you must enable clustering for all 3 module slots, even if you do not have a module installed.
If you do not configure all 3 modules, the cluster will not come up.
For multiple context mode, you must first deploy the logical device, and then enable multiple context mode in the ASA application.
When you deploy a cluster, the Firepower 4100/9300 chassis supervisor configures each ASA application with the following bootstrap configuration. You can later modify parts of the
bootstrap configuration from the ASA, if desired (shown in Bold text).
Click Add > Cluster, and set the following parameters:
Choose I want to: > Create New Cluster
Provide a Device Name.
This name is used internally by the chassis supervisor to configure
management settings and to assign interfaces; it is not the device
name used in the application configuration.
For the Template, choose Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance.
Choose the Image Version.
For the Instance Type, only the Native type is supported.
Click OK.
You see the Provisioning - device name window.
Step 4
Choose the interfaces you want to assign to this cluster.
All valid interfaces are assigned by default. If you defined multiple Cluster type interfaces, deselect all but one.
Step 5
Click the device icon in the center of the screen.
A dialog box appears where you can configure initial bootstrap settings. These settings are meant for initial deployment only,
or for disaster recovery. For normal operation, you can later change most values in the application CLI configuration.
Step 6
On the Cluster Information page, complete the following.
For clustering on multiple
chassis, in the Chassis ID field, enter a chassis
ID. Each chassis in the cluster must use a unique ID.
This field only appears if you added a member interface to cluster
control link Port-Channel 48.
For inter-site clustering, in the Site ID field, enter the site ID for this chassis between 1 and 8.
In the Cluster Key field, configure an authentication key for control traffic on the cluster control link.
The shared secret is an ASCII string from 1 to 63 characters. The shared secret is used to generate the key. This option does
not affect datapath traffic, including connection state update and forwarded packets, which are always sent in the clear.
Set the Cluster Group Name, which is the cluster group name in the logical device configuration.
The name must be an ASCII string from 1 to 38 characters.
Important
From 2.4.1, spaces in cluster group name will be considered as special characters and may result in error while deploying
the logical devices. To avoid this issue, you must rename the cluster group name without a space.
Choose the Management Interface.
This interface is used to manage the logical device. This interface is separate from the chassis management port.
Choose the Address Type for the management interface.
This information is used to configure a management interface in the ASA configuration. Set the following information:
Management IP Pool—Configure a pool of Local IP addresses, one of which will be assigned to each cluster unit for the interface, by entering
the starting and ending addresses separated by a hyphen.
Include at least as many addresses as there are units in the cluster. Note that for the
Firepower 9300, you must include 3 addresses per chassis,
even if you do not have all module slots filled. If you plan
to expand the cluster, include additional addresses. The
Virtual IP address (known as the Main cluster IP address)
that belongs to the current control unit is not a
part of this pool; be sure to reserve an IP address on the
same network for the Main cluster IP address. You can use
IPv4 and/or IPv6 addresses.
Network Mask or Prefix Length
Network Gateway
Virtual IP address—Set the management IP address of the current
control unit. This IP address must be on the same network as
the cluster pool addresses, but not be part of the pool.
Step 7
On the Settings page, complte the following.
From the Firewall Mode drop-down list, choose Transparent or Routed.
In routed mode, the threat
defense is considered to be a router hop in the network. Each interface that you want to route between is on a different subnet.
A transparent firewall, on the other hand, is a Layer 2 firewall that acts like a “bump in the wire,” or a “stealth firewall,”
and is not seen as a router hop to connected devices.
The firewall mode is only set at initial deployment. If you re-apply the bootstrap settings, this setting is not used.
Enter and confirm a Password for the admin user and for the enable password.
The pre-configured ASA admin user is useful for password recovery; if you have FXOS access, you can reset the admin user password
if you forget it.
Step 8
Click OK to close the configuration dialog box.
Step 9
Click Save.
The chassis deploys the logical device by downloading the specified software version and
pushing the bootstrap configuration and management interface settings to the
application instance. Check the Logical Devices page
for the status of the new logical device. When the logical device shows its
Status as online, you can
add
the remaining cluster chassis, or for a cluster isolated to security
modules within one Firepower 9300 chassis, start configuring the
cluster in the application. You may see the "Security module not responding"
status as part of the process; this status is normal and is
temporary.
Step 10
For clustering on multiple chassis, add the next
chassis to the cluster:
On the first chassis of the chassis manager, click the Show Configuration
icon
at the top right; copy the displayed cluster configuration.
Connect to the chassis manager on the next chassis, and add a logical device according to this
procedure.
Choose I want to: > Join an Existing
Cluster.
Click
OK.
In the Copy Cluster Details box, paste in the
cluster configuration from the first chassis, and click
OK.
Click the device icon in the center of the screen. The cluster information is mostly pre-filled, but you must change the following
settings:
Chassis ID—Enter a unique chassis ID.
Site ID—Enter the correct site ID.
Cluster Key—(Not prefilled) Enter the same cluster key.
Click OK.
Click Save.
The chassis deploys the logical device by downloading the specified
software version and pushing the bootstrap configuration and
management interface settings to the application instance. Check the
Logical Devices page for each cluster
member for the status of the new logical device. When the logical
device for each cluster member shows its
Status as online,
you can start configuring the cluster in the application. You may
see the "Security module not responding" status as part of the
process; this status is normal and is temporary.
Step 11
Connect to the control unit ASA to customize your clustering configuration.
Add More Cluster Members
Add or replace the ASA cluster member.
Note
This procedure only applies to adding or replacing a chassis; if you are adding or replacing a module to a Firepower 9300 where clustering is already enabled, the module will be added
automatically.
Before you begin
Make sure your existing cluster has enough IP addresses in the management IP address pool for this new member. If not, you
need to edit the existing cluster bootstrap configuration on each chassis before you add this new member. This change causes
a restart of the logical device.
The interface configuration must be the same on the new chassis. You can export and import FXOS chassis configuration to make
this process easier.
For multiple context mode, enable multiple context mode in the ASA application on the first cluster member; additional cluster
members will inherit the multiple context mode configuration automatically.
Procedure
Step 1
On an existing cluster the chassis manager, choose Logical Devices to open the Logical Devices page.
Step 2
Click the Show Configuration icon () at the top right; copy the displayed cluster configuration.
Step 3
Connect to the chassis manager on the new chassis, and click Add > Cluster.
Step 4
Choose I want to: > Join Existing Cluster
Step 5
For the Device Name, provide a name for the logical device.
Step 6
Click OK.
Step 7
In the Copy Cluster Details box, paste in the cluster configuration from the first chassis, and click OK.
Step 8
Click the device icon in the center of the screen. The cluster information is mostly pre-filled, but you must change the following
settings:
Chassis ID—Enter a unique chassis ID.
Site ID—Enter the correct site ID.
Cluster Key—(Not prefilled) Enter the same cluster key.
Click OK.
Step 9
Click Save.
The chassis deploys the logical device by downloading the specified
software version and pushing the bootstrap configuration and management
interface settings to the application instance. Check the Logical
Devices page for each cluster member for the status of the
new logical device. When the logical device for each cluster member shows
its Status as online, you can
start configuring the cluster in the application. You may see the "Security
module not responding" status as part of the process; this status is normal
and is temporary.
ASA: Change the Firewall Mode and Context Mode
By default, the FXOS chassis deploys a cluster in routed firewall mode, and single context mode.
Change the firewall mode— To change the mode after you depoy, change the mode on
the control unit; the mode is automatically changed on all data units to
match.. In multiple context mode, you set the
firewall mode per context.See
the ASA general operations configuration guide.
Change to multiple context mode—To change to multiple context mode after you
deploy, change the mode on the control unit; the mode is automatically changed
on all data units to match. See
the ASA general operations configuration guide.
ASA: Configure Data Interfaces
This procedure configures basic parameters for each data interface that
you assigned to the cluster when you deployed it in FXOS. For clustering on multiple
chassis, data interfaces are always Spanned EtherChannel interfaces.
Note
The management interface was pre-configured when you deployed the cluster. You can also change the management interface parameters
in ASA, but this procedure focuses on data interfaces. The management interface is an individual interface, as opposed to
a Spanned interface. See Management Interface for more information.
Before you begin
For multiple context mode, start this procedure in the system execution space. If you are not already in the System configuration
mode in the Configuration > Device List pane, double-click System under the active device IP address.
For transparent mode, configure the bridge group.
When using Spanned EtherChannels for a cluster with multiple chassis,
the port-channel interface will not come up until clustering is fully
enabled. This requirement prevents traffic from being forwarded to a node
that is not an active node in the cluster.
Procedure
Step 1
Depending on your context mode:
For single mode, choose the Configuration > Device Setup > Interface Settings > Interfaces pane.
For multiple mode in the System execution space, choose the Configuration > Context Management > Interfaces pane.
Step 2
Select the interface, and click Edit.
The Edit Interface dialog box appears.
Step 3
Set the following:
(For EtherChannels) MIO Port-channel ID—Enter the same ID used in FXOS.
Enable Interface (checked by default)
The rest of the fields on this screen are described later in this procedure.
Step 4
To configure the MAC address and optional parameters, click the Advanced tab.
In the MAC Address Cloning area, set a
manual global MAC address for the EtherChannel. Do not set the
Standby MAC Address; it is ignored. You must configure a MAC address
for a Spanned EtherChannel to avoid potential network connectivity
problems. With a manually-configured MAC address, the MAC address
stays with the current control unit. If you do not configure a MAC
address, then if the control unit changes, the new control unit uses
a new MAC address for the interface, which can cause a temporary
network outage.
In multiple context mode, if you share an interface between contexts, you should instead enable auto-generation of MAC addresses
so you do not need to set the MAC address manually. Note that you must manually configure the MAC address using this command
for non-shared interfaces.
In the ASA Cluster area, for inter-site clustering set Site specific MAC Addresses, and for routed mode, the IP addresses for a site by clicking Add and specifying a MAC address and IP address for the site ID (1 through 8). Repeat for up to 8 sites. The site-specific IP addresses must be on the same subnet as the global IP address. The site-specific MAC address and IP address used by a unit depends on the site ID you specify in each unit’s bootstrap configuration.
Step 5
(Optional) Configure VLAN subinterfaces on this EtherChannel. The rest of this procedure applies to the subinterfaces.
Step 6
(Multiple context mode) Before you complete this procedure, you need to allocate interfaces to contexts.
Click OK to accept your changes.
Allocate interfaces.
Change to the context that you want to configure: in the Device List pane, double-click the context name under the active device IP address.
Choose the Configuration > Device Setup > Interface Settings > Interfaces pane, select the port-channel interface that you want to customize, and click Edit.
The Edit Interface dialog box appears.
Step 7
Click the General tab.
Step 8
(Transparent Mode) From the Bridge Group drop-down list, choose the bridge group to which you want to assign this interface.
Step 9
In the Interface Name field, enter a name up to 48 characters in length.
Step 10
In the Security level field, enter a level between 0 (lowest) and 100 (highest).
Step 11
(Routed Mode) For an IPv4 address, click the Use Static IP radio button and enter the IP address and mask. DHCP and PPPoE are not supported. For point-to-point connections, you can specify a 31-bit subnet mask (255.255.255.254). In this case, no IP addresses are
reserved for the network or broadcast addresses. For transparent mode, you configure the IP address for the bridge group interface, not the EtherChannel interface.
Step 12
(Routed Mode) To configure an IPv6 address, click the IPv6 tab.
For transparent mode, you configure the IP address for the bridge group interface, not the EtherChannel interface.
Check the Enable IPv6 check box.
In the Interface IPv6 Addresses area, click Add.
The Add IPv6 Address for Interface dialog box appears.
Note
The Enable address autoconfiguration option is not supported.
In the Address/Prefix Length field, enter the global IPv6 address and the IPv6 prefix length. For example, 2001:DB8::BA98:0:3210/64.
(Optional) To use the Modified EUI-64 interface ID as the host address, check the EUI-64 check box. In this case, just enter the prefix in the Address/Prefix Length field.
Click OK.
Step 13
Click OK to return to the Interfaces screen.
Step 14
Click Apply.
ASA: Customize the Cluster Configuration
If you want to change bootstrap settings after you deploy the cluster or configure additional
options, such as clustering health monitoring, TCP connection replication delay, flow
mobility, and other optimizations, you can do so on the control unit.
Configure Basic ASA
Cluster Parameters
You can customize cluster settings on the control unit.
Before you begin
For multiple context mode, complete this procedure in the system execution space on the
control unit. If you are not already in the System
configuration mode, in the Configuration > Device List pane, double-click System under
the active device IP address.
The local-unit Member Name and several other options can only be set on the FXOS chassis, or they can only be changed on the ASA if you disable clustering,
so they are not included in the following procedure.
Procedure
Step 1
Choose Configuration > Device Management > High Availability and Scalability > ASA Cluster.
Step 2
(Optional) Configure the following optional parameters:
Cluster Member Limit—Configure the maximum
number of cluster members, between 2 and 16. The default is 16. If
you know that your cluster will be fewer than the maximum of 16
units, then we recommend that you set the actual planned number of
units. Setting the maximum units lets the cluster manage resources
better. For example, if you use port address translation (PAT), then
the control unit can allocate port blocks to the planned number of
members, and it will not have to reserve ports for extra units you
don't plan to use.
Site Periodic GARP—The ASA generates gratuitous ARP (GARP) packets to keep the switching infrastructure up to date: the highest priority member
at each site periodically generates GARP traffic for the global MAC/IP addresses. GARP is enabled by default when you set
the site ID for each unit and the site MAC and IP address for each Spanned EtherChannel. Set the GARP interval between 1 and
1000000 seconds. The default is 290 seconds.
When using per-site MAC and IP addresses, packets sourced from the cluster use a site-specific MAC address and IP address,
while packets received by the cluster use a global MAC address and IP address. If traffic is not generated from the global
MAC address periodically, you could experience a MAC address timeout on your switches for the global MAC address. After a
timeout, traffic destined for the global MAC address will be flooded across the entire switching infrastructure, which can
cause performance and security concerns.
Enable connection rebalancing for TCP traffic across all the ASAs in the
cluster—Enables connection rebalancing. This
parameter is disabled by default. This parameter is not part of the
bootstrap configuration, and is replicated from the control node to
the data nodes. If enabled, ASAs exchange information about the
connections per second periodically, and offload new connections
from devices with more connections per second to less loaded
devices. Existing connections are never moved. Moreover, because
this command only rebalances based on connections per second, the
total number of established connections on each node is not
considered, and the total number of connections may not be equal.
The frequency, between 1 and 360 seconds, specifies how often the
load information is exchanged. The default is 5 seconds.
Once a connection is offloaded to a different node, it becomes an
asymmetric connection.
Do not configure
connection rebalancing for inter-site topologies; you do not want
new connections rebalanced to cluster members at a different site.
Enable cluster load monitor—You can monitor the traffic load for cluster members, including total connection count, CPU and memory usage, and buffer
drops. If the load is too high, you can choose to manually disable clustering on the unit if the remaining units can handle
the load, or adjust the load balancing on the external switch. This feature is enabled by default. For example, for inter-chassis
clustering on the Firepower 9300 with 3 security modules in each chassis, if 2 security modules in a chassis leave the cluster,
then the same amount of traffic to the chassis will be sent to the remaining module and potentially overwhelm it. You can
periodically monitor the traffic load. If the load is too high, you can choose to manually disable clustering on the unit.
Set the following values:
Time Interval—Sets the time in seconds between monitoring messages, between 10 and 360 seconds. The default is 20 seconds.
Number of Intervals—Sets the number of intervals for which the ASA maintains data, between 1 and 60. The default is 30.
See Monitoring > ASA Cluster > Cluster Load-Monitoring to view the traffic load.
Enable health monitoring of this device within the cluster—Enables the cluster unit health check feature, and determines the amount of time between unit heartbeat status messages, between .3 and 45 seconds; The default is 3 seconds. Note: When you are adding new units to the cluster, and making topology changes on the ASA or the switch, you should disable this
feature temporarily until the cluster is complete, and also disable interface monitoring for the disabled interfaces (Configuration > Device Management > High Availability and Scalability > ASA Cluster > Cluster Interface Health Monitoring). You can re-enable this feature after cluster and topology changes are complete. To determine unit health, the ASA cluster
units send heartbeat messages on the cluster control link to other units. If a unit does not receive any heartbeat messages from a peer unit within the holdtime period, the peer unit is considered unresponsive or dead.
Debounce Time—Configures the debounce time before the ASA considers an interface to be failed and the unit is removed from the cluster.
This feature allows for faster detection of interface failures. Note that configuring a lower debounce time increases the
chances of false-positives. When an interface status update occurs, the ASA waits the number of milliseconds specified before
marking the interface as failed and the unit is removed from the cluster. In the case of an EtherChannel that transitions from a down state to an up state (for example, the switch reloaded, or the
switch enabled an EtherChannel), a longer debounce time can prevent the interface from appearing to be failed on a cluster
unit just because another cluster unit was faster at bundling the ports. The default debounce time is 500 ms, with a range of 300 ms to 9 seconds.
Replicate console output—Enables console replication from data
units to the control unit. This feature is disabled by default. The
ASA may print out some messages directly to the console for certain
critical events. If you enable console replication, data units send
the console messages to the control unit so that you only need to
monitor one console port for the cluster. This parameter is not part
of the bootstrap configuration, and is replicated from the control
unit to the data units.
Enable Director Localization for inter-DC cluster—To improve performance and reduce round-trip time latency for inter-site clustering for data centers, you can enable director
localization. New connections are typically load-balanced and owned by cluster members within a given site. However, the ASA
assigns the Director role to a member at any site. Director localization enables additional Director roles: a Local Director at the same site as the Owner, and a Global
Director that can be at any site. Keeping the Owner and Director at the same site improves performance. Also, if the original
Owner fails, the Local Director will choose a new connection Owner at the same site. The Global Director is used if a cluster
member receives packets for a connection that is owned on a different site.
Site Redundancy—To protect flows from a site failure, you can enable site redundancy. If the connection backup owner is at the same site
as the owner, then an additional backup owner will be chosen from another site to protect flows from a site failure. Director
localization and site redundancy are separate features; you can configure one or the other, or configure both.
Enable config sync acceleration—When a data unit has the same
configuration as the control unit, it will skip syncing the
configuration and will join faster. This feature is enabled by
default. This feature is configured on each unit, and is not
replicated from the control unit to the data unit.
Note
Some configuration commands are not compatible with accelerated cluster joining; if these commands are present on the unit,
even if accelerated cluster joining is enabled, configuration syncing will always occur. You must remove the incompatible
configuration for accelerated cluster joining to work. Use the show cluster info unit-join-acceleration incompatible-config to view incompatible configuration.
Enable parallel configuration replicate—Enable the control unit to
sync configuration changes with data units in parallel. Otherwise,
synching occurs sequentially, and can take more time.
Flow State Refresh Keepalive Interval—Set the
keepalive interval for flow state refresh messages (clu_keepalive
and clu_update messages) from the flow owner to the director and
backup owner, between 15 and 20 seconds. The default is 15. You may
want to set the interval to be longer than the default to reduce the
amount of traffic on the cluster control link.
Step 3
In the Cluster Control Link area, you can configue the cluster control link MTU. Other options in this area cannot be configured on the ASA.
MTU—Specify the maximum transmission unit for the cluster control
link interface to be at least 100 bytes higher than the highest MTU
of the data interfaces. We suggest setting the MTU to the maximum of
9184; the minimum value is 1400
bytes. Because the cluster control link traffic includes data packet
forwarding, the cluster control link needs to accommodate the entire
size of a data packet plus cluster traffic overhead.
For example, because the maximum MTU is 9184, then the highest data
interface MTU can be 9084, while the
cluster control link can be set to 9184.
Step 4
(Optional) (Firepower 9300 only) In the Parallel Join of Units Per Chassis area, you can ensure that the security modules in a chassis join the cluster simultaneously, so that traffic is evenly distributed
between the modules. If a module joins very much in advance of other modules, it can receive more traffic than desired, because
the other modules cannot yet share the load.
Minimum Units Required to Join—Specifies the minimum number of modules in the same chassis required to be ready before a module can join the cluster, between
1 and 3. The default is 1, meaning that a module will not wait for other modules to be ready before it joins the cluster.
If you set the value to 3, for example, then each module will wait the maximum delay time or until all 3 modules are ready
before joining the cluster. All 3 modules will request to join the cluster roughly simultaneously, and will all start receiving
traffic around the same time.
Maximum Join Delay—Specifies the maximum delay time in minutes before a module stops waiting for other modules to be ready before it joins the
cluster, between 0 and 30 minutes. The default is 0, meaning the module will not wait for other modules to be ready before
it joins the cluster. If you set the mimimum units to 1, then this value must be 0. If you set the mimimum units to 2 or 3,
then this value must be 1 or more. This timer is per module, but when the first module joins the cluster, then all other module
timers end, and the remaining modules join the cluster.
For example, you set the minimum units to 3, and the maximum delay to 5 minutes. When module 1 comes up, it starts its 5 minute
timer. Module 2 comes up 2 minutes later and starts its 5 minute timer. Module 3 comes up 1 minute later, therefore all modules
will now join the cluster at the 4 minute mark; they will not wait for the timers to complete. If module 3 never comes up,
then Module 1 will join the cluster at the end of its 5 minute timer, and Module 2 will also join, even though its timer still
has 2 minutes remaining; it will not wait for its timer to complete.
Step 5
Click Apply.
Configure Interface Health Monitoring and Auto-Rejoin Settings
You might want to
disable health monitoring of non-essential interfaces, for example, the
management interface. You can monitor any port-channel ID or single physical
interface ID. Health monitoring is not performed on VLAN subinterfaces or
virtual interfaces such as VNIs or BVIs. You cannot configure monitoring for
the cluster control link; it is always monitored.
Procedure
Step 1
Choose
Configuration
> Device Management
> High Availability and
Scalability
> ASA
Cluster > Cluster Interface Health Monitoring.
Step 2
Select an
interface in the
Monitored Interfaces box, and click
Add to move it to the
Unmonitored Interfaces box.
Interface status messages detect link failure. If all physical ports for a given logical interface fail on a particular unit,
but there are active ports under the same logical interface on other units, then the unit is removed from the cluster. If
a unit does not receive interface status messages within the holdtime, then the amount of time before the ASA removes a member
from the cluster depends on the type of interface and whether the unit is an established member or is joining the cluster.
Health check is enabled by default for all interfaces.
You might want to disable health monitoring of non-essential interfaces, for example, the management interface. You can specify
any port-channel ID or single physical interface ID. Health monitoring is not performed on VLAN subinterfaces or virtual interfaces
such as VNIs or BVIs. You cannot configure monitoring for the cluster control link; it is always monitored.
When any topology changes occur (such as adding or removing a data interface, enabling or
disabling an interface on the ASA, Firepower 4100/9300 chassis, or the switch, or adding an additional switch to form a VSS, vPC,
StackWise, or StackWise Virtual) you should disable the health check feature (Configuration > Device Management > High Availability and Scalability > ASA Cluster) and also disable interface monitoring for the disabled
interfaces. When the topology change is complete, and the configuration
change is synced to all units, you can re-enable the health check feature.
Step 3
Click the Auto Rejoin tab to customize the auto-rejoin settings in case of an interface, system, or cluster control link failure. For each type, click Edit to set the following:
Maximum Rejoin Attempts—Define the number of attempts at rejoining the cluster by setting Unlimited or a value between 0 and 65535. 0 disables auto-rejoining. The default value is Unlimited for the cluster-interface and 3 for the data-interface and system.
Rejoin Interval—Define the interval duration in minutes between rejoin attempts by setting the interval between 2 and 60. The default value
is 5 minutes. The maximum total time that the unit attempts to rejoin the cluster is limited to 14400 minutes (10 days) from the
time of last failure.
Interval Variation—Define if the interval duration increases by setting the interval variation between 1 and 3: 1 (no change); 2 (2 x the previous duration), or 3 (3 x the previous duration). For example, if you set the interval duration to 5 minutes, and set the variation to 2, then
the first attempt is after 5 minutes; the 2nd attempt is 10 minutes (2 x 5); the 3rd attempt 20 minutes (2 x 10), and so on.
The default value is 1 for the cluster-interface and 2 for the data-interface and system.
Click Restore Defaults to restore the default settings.
Check Chassis Heartbeat Delay Auto-Rejoin
to set the chassis rejoin to match the Auto Rejoin
settings for chassis heartbeat failures. By default, if the chassis
heartbeat fails and then recovers, the node rejoins the cluster immediately.
However, if you configure this option, it will rejoin according to the
settings of the Auto Rejoin screen.
Step 4
Click
Apply.
Configure the
Cluster TCP Replication Delay
Enable the cluster
replication delay for TCP connections to help eliminate the “unnecessary work”
related to short-lived flows by delaying the director/backup flow creation.
Note that if a unit fails before the director/backup flow is created, then
those flows cannot be recovered. Similarly, if traffic is rebalanced to a
different unit before the flow is created, then the flow cannot be recovered.
You should not enable the TCP replication delay for traffic on which you
disable TCP randomization.
Procedure
Step 1
Choose
Configuration > Device
Management > High Availability and Scalability > ASA Cluster
Replication.
Step 2
Click
Add and set the following values:
Replication
delay—Set the seconds between 1 and 15.
HTTP—Set the
delay for all HTTP traffic. This setting is enabled by default for 5 seconds.
Source Criteria
Source—Set the source IP address.
Service—(Optional) Set the source port. Typically you set either
the source or the destination port, but not both.
Destination
Criteria
Source—Set the destination IP address.
Service—(Optional) Set the destination port.
Typically you set either the source or the destination port, but not both.
Step 3
Click
OK.
Step 4
Click
Apply.
Configure Inter-Site Features
For inter-site clustering, you can customize your configuration to enhance redundancy and stability.
Configure Cluster Flow Mobility
You can inspect LISP traffic to enable flow mobility when a server moves between sites.
About LISP Inspection
You can inspect LISP
traffic to enable flow mobility between sites.
About LISP
Data center
virtual machine mobility such as VMware VMotion enables servers to migrate
between data centers while maintaining connections to clients. To support such
data center server mobility, routers need to be able to update the ingress
route towards the server when it moves. Cisco Locator/ID Separation Protocol
(LISP) architecture separates the device identity, or endpoint identifier
(EID), from its location, or routing locator (RLOC), into two different
numbering spaces, making server migration transparent to clients. For example,
when a server moves to a new site and a client sends traffic to the server, the
router redirects traffic to the new location.
LISP requires
routers and servers in certain roles, such as the LISP egress tunnel router
(ETR), ingress tunnel router (ITR), first hop routers, map resolver (MR), and
map server (MS). When the first hop router for the server senses that the
server is connected to a different router, it updates all of the other routers
and databases so that the ITR connected to the client can intercept,
encapsulate, and send traffic to the new server location.
Secure
Firewall ASA
LISP Support
The ASA does not run LISP itself; it can, however, inspect LISP traffic for location
changes and then use this information for seamless clustering operation. Without
LISP integration, when a server moves to a new site, traffic comes to an ASA cluster member at the new site instead of to the original flow owner. The new
ASA forwards traffic to the ASA at the old site, and then the old ASA has to send traffic back to the new site to reach the server. This traffic
flow is sub-optimal and is known as “tromboning” or “hair-pinning.”
With LISP integration, the ASA cluster members can inspect LISP traffic passing between the first hop router
and the ETR or ITR, and can then change the flow owner to be at the new site.
LISP
Guidelines
The ASA cluster members must reside between the first hop router and the ITR
or ETR for the site. The ASA cluster itself cannot be the first hop router for an extended
segment.
Only fully-distributed flows are supported; centralized flows, semi-distributed flows, or
flows belonging to individual nodes are not moved to new owners.
Semi-distributed flows include applications, such as SIP, where all
child flows are owned by the same ASA that owns the parent flow.
The cluster
only moves Layer 3 and 4 flow states; some application data might be lost.
For
short-lived flows or non-business-critical flows, moving the owner may not be
worthwhile. You can control the types of traffic that are supported with this
feature when you configure the inspection policy, and should limit flow
mobility to essential traffic.
ASA LISP
Implementation
This feature
includes several inter-related configurations (all of which are described in
this chapter):
(Optional) Limit inspected EIDs based on the host or server IP address—The first hop router
might send EID-notify messages for hosts or networks the ASA cluster is not involved with, so you can limit the EIDs to only those
servers or networks relevant to your cluster. For example, if the
cluster is only involved with 2 sites, but LISP is running on 3 sites,
you should only include EIDs for the 2 sites involved with the cluster.
LISP traffic inspection—The ASA inspects LISP traffic on UDP port 4342 for the EID-notify message
sent between the first hop router and the ITR or ETR. The ASA maintains an EID table that correlates the EID and the site ID. For
example, you should inspect LISP traffic with a source IP address of the
first hop router and a destination address of the ITR or ETR. Note that
LISP traffic is not assigned a director, and LISP traffic itself does
not participate in cluster state sharing.
Service Policy
to enable flow mobility on specified traffic—You should enable flow mobility on
business-critical traffic. For example, you can limit flow mobility to only
HTTPS traffic, and/or to traffic to specific servers.
Site IDs—The ASA uses the site ID for each cluster node to determine the new owner.
Cluster-level
configuration to enable flow mobility—You must also enable flow mobility at the
cluster level. This on/off toggle lets you easily enable or disable flow
mobility for a particular class of traffic or applications.
Configure LISP Inspection
You can inspect LISP
traffic to enable flow mobility when a server moves between sites.
Before you begin
Set the site ID for the chassis on Firepower 4100/9300 chassis supervisor.
LISP traffic is
not included in the default-inspection-traffic class, so you must configure a
separate class for LISP traffic as part of this procedure.
Procedure
Step 1
(Optional) Configure a
LISP inspection map to limit inspected EIDs based on IP address, and to
configure the LISP pre-shared key:
Enter a name (up to 40 characters) and description.
For the
Allowed-EID access-list, click
Manage.
The
ACL Manager opens.
The first
hop router or ITR/ETR might send EID-notify messages for hosts or networks the
ASA cluster is not involved with, so you can limit the EIDs to only those
servers or networks relevant to your cluster. For example, if the cluster is
only involved with 2 sites, but LISP is running on 3 sites, you should only
include EIDs for the 2 sites involved with the cluster.
Add an ACL
with at least one ACE according to the firewall configuration guide.
If
necessary, enter the
Validation Key.
If you
copied an encrypted key, click the
Encrypted radio button.
Click
OK.
Step 2
Add a service
policy rule to configure LISP inspection:
Choose
Configuration
> Firewall
> Service Policy
Rules.
Click
Add.
On the
Service Policy page, apply the rule to an interface
or globally.
If you
have an existing service policy you want to use, add a rule to that policy. By
default, the ASA includes a global policy called
global_policy. You can also create one service policy per
interface if you do not want to apply the policy globally. LISP inspection is
applied to traffic bidirectionally so you do not need to apply the service
policy on both the source and destination interfaces; all traffic that enters
or exits the interface to which you apply the rule is affected if the traffic
matches the class for both directions.
On the
Traffic Classification Criteria page, click
Create a new traffic class, and under
Traffic Match Criteria, check Source and Destination IP
Address (uses ACL).
Click
Next.
Specify
the traffic you want to inspect. You should specify traffic between the first
hop router and the ITR or ETR on UDP port 4342. Both IPv4 and IPv6 ACLs are
accepted.
Click
Next.
On the
Rule Actions wizard page or tab, select the
Protocol
Inspection tab.
Check the
LISP check box,.
(Optional)
Click
Configure to choose the inspection map you created.
Click
Finish to save
the service policy rule.
Step 3
Add a service
policy rule to enable Flow Mobility for critical traffic:
Choose
Configuration
> Firewall
> Service Policy Rules.
Click
Add.
On the
Service Policy page, choose the same service policy
you used for LISP inspection.
On the
Traffic Classification Criteria page, click
Create a new traffic class, and under
Traffic Match Criteria, check Source and Destination IP
Address (uses ACL).
Click
Next.
Specify
the business critical traffic that you want to re-assign to the most optimal
site when servers change sites. For example, you can limit flow mobility to
only HTTPS traffic, and/or to traffic to specific servers. Both IPv4 and IPv6
ACLs are accepted.
Click
Next.
On the
Rule Actions wizard page or tab, select the
Cluster tab.
Check the
Enable Cluster flow-mobility triggered by LISP EID
messages check box.
Click
Finish to save the service policy rule.
Step 4
Choose
Configuration > Device
Management > High Availability and Scalability > ASA
Cluster > Cluster Configuration, and check the
Enable
Clustering flow mobility check box.
Step 5
Click
Apply.
Configure Distributed Site-to-Site VPN
By default, the ASA cluster uses Centralized Site-to-Site VPN mode. To take advantage of the scalability of clustering, you
can enable Distributed Site-to-Site VPN mode. In this mode, S2S IPsec IKEv2 VPN connections are distributed across members
of an ASA cluster. Distributing VPN connections across the members of a cluster allows both the capacity and throughput of
the cluster to be fully utilized, significantly scaling VPN support beyond Centralized VPN capabilities.
About Distributed Site-to-Site VPN
Distributed VPN Connection Roles
When running in Distributed VPN mode the following roles are assigned to the cluster members:
Active Session Owner—The unit that initially receives the connection, or that has transitioned a backup session to an active
session. The owner maintains state and processes packets for the complete session, including the IKE and IPsec tunnels and
all traffic associated with them.
Backup Session Owner—The unit that is handling the backup session for an existing active session. Depending on the backup
strategy chosen, this may be a unit in the same chassis as the active session owner, or a unit in another chassis. If the
active session owner fails, the backup session owner becomes the active session owner, and a new backup session is established
on a different unit.
Forwarder—If traffic associated with a VPN session is sent to a unit that does not own the VPN session, that unit will use
the Cluster Control Link (CCL) to forward the traffic to the member which owns the VPN session
Orchestrator—The orchestrator (always the control unit of the cluster) is
responsible for calculating which sessions will move and where to when
executing an Active Session Redistribution (ASR). It sends a request to the
owner member X to move N sessions to member Y. Member X will respond back to
the orchestrator when complete, specifying how many sessions it was able to
move.
Distributed VPN Session Characteristics
Distributed S2S VPN Sessions have the following characteristics. Otherwise, VPN connections behave as they normally do if
not on an ASA cluster.
VPN sessions are distributed across the cluster at the session level. Meaning the same cluster member handles the IKE and
IPsec tunnels, and all their traffic, for a VPN connection. If VPN session traffic is sent to a cluster member that does not
own that VPN session, traffic is forwarded to the cluster member that owns the VPN session.
VPN sessions have a Session ID that is unique across the cluster. Using the session ID, traffic is validated, forwarding decisions
are made, and IKE negotiation is completed.
In an S2S VPN hub and spoke configuration, when clients connect through the ASA cluster (called hair-pinning), the session
traffic flowing in and the session traffic flowing out may be on different cluster members.
You can require that the backup session to be allocated on a security module in another chassis; this provides protection
against chassis failure. Or, you can choose to allocate backup sessions on any node in the cluster; this provides protection
against node failure only. When there are two chassis in the cluster, remote-chassis backup is strongly recommended.
Only IKEv2 IPsec S2S VPN is supported in Distributed S2S VPN mode, IKEv1 is not. IKEv1 S2S is supported in centralized VPN
mode.
Each security module supports up to 6K VPN sessions for a maximum of approximately 36K sessions across 6 members. The actual
number of sessions supported on a cluster member is determined by platform capacity, allocated licenses, and per context resource
allocation. When utilization is close to the limit, there may be cases where session creation fails, even though the maximum
capacity has not been reached on each cluster unit. This is because active session allocation is determined by external switching,
and backup session allocation is determined by an internal cluster algorithm. Customers are encouraged to size their utilization
accordingly and allow room for uneven distribution.
Distributed VPN Handling of Cluster Events
Table 2.
Event
Distributed VPN
Member failure
For all active sessions on this failed member, the backup sessions (on another member) become active and backup sessions are
reallocated on another unit according to the backup strategy.
Chassis failure
When a remote-chassis backup strategy is being used, for all active sessions on the failed chassis, the backup sessions (on
a member in the other chassis) become active. When the units are replaced, backup sessions for these now active sessions
will be reallocated on members in the replaced chassis.
When a flat backup strategy is being used, if both the active and backup sessions are on the failed chassis, the connection
will drop. All active sessions with backup sessions on a member in the other chassis, fallback to these sessions. New backup
sessions will be allocated on another member in the surviving chassis.
Inactivate a cluster member
For all active sessions on the cluster member being inactivated, backup sessions (on another member) become active and reallocate
backup sessions on another unit according to the backup strategy.
Cluster member join
If the VPN cluster mode is not set to distributed, the control
unit will request a mode change.
If, or once the VPN mode is compatible, the cluster member will be assigned active and backup sessions in the flow of normal
operations.
Unsupported Inspections
The following types of inspections are not supported or are disabled in Distributed S2S VPN mode:
CTIQBE
DCERPC
H323, H225, and RAS
IPsec pass-through
MGCP
MMP
NetBIOS
PPTP
RADIUS
RSH
RTSP
SCCP (Skinny)
SUNRPC
TFTP
WAAS
WCCP
XDMCP
IPsec IKEv2 Modifications
IKEv2 is modified while in Distributed S2S VPN mode in the following ways:
An identity is used in place of IP/port tuples. This allows for proper forwarding decisions on the packets, and cleanup of
previous connections that may be on other cluster members.
The (SPI) identifiers that identify a single IKEv2 session are locally generated, random 8-byte values that are unique across
the cluster. An SPI embeds a time stamp and a cluster member ID. Upon receipt of an IKE negotiation packet, if the time stamp
or cluster member ID check fails, the packet is dropped and a message is logged indicating the reason.
IKEv2 processing has been modified to prevent NAT-T negotiations from failing by being split across cluster members. A new
ASP classify domain, cluster_isakmp_redirect, and rules are added when IKEv2 is enabled on an interface.
Model Support
The only device supported for Distributed VPN is the Firepower 9300. Distributed VPN supports a maximum of 6 modules on up
to 2 chassis. You can have different quantities of installed security modules in each chassis, although we recommend an equal
distribution.
Inter-site clustering is not supported.
Firewall Mode
Distributed S2S VPN is supported in routed mode only.
Context Mode
Distributed S2S VPN operates in both single and multiple context modes. However, in multiple context mode, active session
redistribution is done at the system level, not at the context level. This prevents an active session associated with a context
from moving to a cluster member that contains active sessions associated with a different context, unknowingly creating an
unsupportable load.
High Availability
The following capabilities provide resiliency against single failure of a security module or chassis:
VPN Sessions that are backed up on another security module in the cluster, on any chassis, withstand security module failures.
VPN Sessions that are backed up on another chassis withstand chassis failures.
The control unit can change without losing VPN S2S sessions.
If an additional failure occurs before the cluster has stabilized, connections may be lost if the both active and backup sessions
are on the failed units.
All attempts are made to ensure no sessions are lost when a member leaves the cluster in a graceful manner such as disabling
the VPN cluster mode, reloading a cluster member, and other anticipated chassis changes. During these types of operations,
sessions will not be lost as long as the cluster is given time to re-establish session backups between operations. If a graceful
exit is triggered on the last cluster member, it will gracefully tear down existing sessions.
Dynamic PAT
Is not available while in Distributed VPN mode.
CMPv2
The CMPv2 ID certificate and key pairs are synchronized across the cluster members.
However, only the control unit in the cluster automatically renews and rekeys the
CMPv2 certificate. The control unit synchronizes these new ID certificates and keys
to all cluster members on a renewal. In this way, all members in the cluster utilize
the CMPv2 certificates for authentication, and also any member is capable of taking
over as the control unit.
Enable Distributed S2S VPN
Enable Distributed Site-to-Site VPN to take advantage of the scalability of clustering for VPN sessions.
Note
Changing the VPN mode between centralized and distributed causes all existing sessions to be torn down. Changing the backup
mode is dynamic and will not terminate sessions.
Before you begin
You must have a Carrier License configured on all members of the cluster.
Your S2S VPN configuration must be set.
Procedure
Step 1
Choose Configuration > Device Management > High Availability and Scalability > ASA Cluster.
Step 2
In the VPN Cluster Mode area, choose the VPN Mode for the cluster, Centralized or Distributed.
Step 3
Choose the Backup Distribution Mode, Flat or Remote-chassis.
In flat backup mode, standby sessions are established on any other cluster member. This will protect users from blade failures,
however, chassis failure protection is not guaranteed.
In remote-chassis backup mode standby sessions are established on a member of another chassis in the cluster. This will protect
users from both blade failures and chassis failures.
If remote-chassis is configured in a single chassis environment (intentionally configured or the result of a failure), no
backups will be created until another chassis joins.
Redistribute Distributed S2S VPN Sessions
Active Session Redistribution (ASR) redistributes the active VPN session load across the cluster members. Due to the dynamic
nature of beginning and ending sessions, ASR is a best effort balancing of the sessions across all cluster members. Repeated
redistribution actions will optimize the balance.
Redistribution can be run at any time, should be run after any topology change in the cluster, and is recommended after a
new member joins the cluster. The goal of redistribution is to creat a stable VPN cluster. A stable VPN cluster has an almost
equal number of active and backup sessions across the nodes.
To move a session, the backup session becomes the active one and another node is selected to host a new backup session. Moving
sessions is dependent on the location of the active session's backup and the number of active sessions already on that particular
backup node. If the backup session node is unable to host the active session for some reason, the original node remains owner
of the session.
In multiple-context mode, active session redistribution is done at the system level, not the individual context level. It
is not done at the context level because an active session in one context could be moved a member that contains many more
active sessions in a different context, creating more load on that cluster member.
Before you begin
Enable system logs if you would like to monitor redistribution activity.
This procedure must be carried out on the control unit of the cluster.
Procedure
Step 1
Choose Monitoring > ASA Cluster > ASA Cluster > Cluster Summary > VPN Cluster Summary to view how active and backup sessions are distributed across the cluster.
Depending on the number of sessions to redistribute and the load on the cluster, this may take some time. Syslogs containing
the following phrases (and other system details not shown here) are provided as redistribution activity occurs:
Syslog Phrase
Notes
VPN session redistribution started
Control unit only
Sent request to move number sessions from orig-member-name to dest-member-name
Control unit only
Failed to send session redistribution message to member-name
Control unit only
Received request to move number sessions from orig-member-name to dest-member-name
Data unit only
Moved number sessions to member-name
The number of active sessions moved to the named cluster.
Failed to receive session move response from dest-member-name
Refresh the Monitoring > ASA Cluster > ASA Cluster > Cluster Summary > VPN Cluster Summary to see the results of the redistribution activity.
If your redistribution was successful, and there has been no substantial system or session activity, your system will be
balanced and this action is complete.
Otherwise, repeat the redistribution process to obtain a balanced and stable system.
FXOS: Remove a Cluster Node
The following sections describe how to remove nodes temporarily or permanently from the cluster.
Temporary Removal
A cluster node will be automatically removed from the
cluster due to a hardware or network failure, for example. This removal is temporary
until the conditions are rectified, and it can rejoin the cluster. You can also
manually disable clustering.
To check whether a device is currently in the
cluster, check the cluster status on the chassis managerLogical Devices page:
Disable clustering in the application—You can disable clustering using the
application CLI. Enter the cluster remove unitname command to remove any node other than the one
you are logged into. The bootstrap configuration remains intact, as well as
the last configuration synced from the control node, so you can later re-add
the node without losing your configuration. If you enter this command on a
data node to remove the control node, a new control node is elected.
When a device becomes inactive, all data interfaces are shut down; only the
Management interface can send and receive traffic. To resume traffic flow,
re-enable clustering. The Management interface remains up using the IP
address the node received from the bootstrap configuration. However if you
reload, and the node is still inactive in the cluster (for example, you saved the configuration with
clustering disabled), the Management interface is disabled.
To reenable clustering, on the ASA enter
cluster groupname and then
enable.
Disable the application instance—In the chassis manager on the Logical Devices page, click the Slider enabled
(). You can later reenable it using the Slider
disabled ().
Shut down the security module/engine—In the chassis manager on the Security Module/Engine page, click the
Power Off
icon.
Shut down the chassis—In the chassis manager on the Overview page, click the
Shut Down
icon.
Permanent Removal
You can permanently remove a cluster node using the following methods.
Delete the logical device—In the chassis manager on the Logical Devices page, click the Delete (). You can then deploy a standalone logical device, a new cluster, or even add a new logical device to the same cluster.
Remove the chassis or security module from service—If you remove a device
from service, you can add replacement hardware as a new node of the
cluster.
ASA: Manage Cluster Members
After you deploy the cluster, you can change the configuration and manage cluster members.
Become an Inactive
Member
To become an inactive member of the cluster, disable clustering
on the node while leaving the clustering configuration intact.
Note
When an ASA becomes inactive (either manually or through a
health check failure), all data interfaces are shut down; only the
management-only interface can send and receive traffic. To resume traffic flow,
re-enable clustering; or you can remove the node altogether from the cluster.
The management interface remains up using the IP address the node received from
the cluster IP pool. However if you reload, and the node is still inactive in
the cluster (for example, you saved the configuration with clustering disabled),
then the management interface is disabled. You must use the console port for any
further configuration.
Before you begin
For multiple context mode, perform this procedure in the system
execution space. If you are not already in the System configuration mode in the Configuration >
Device List pane, double-click
System under the active device IP address.
Procedure
Step 1
Choose Configuration > Device Management > High Availability and Scalability > ASA Cluster > Cluster Configuration.
Step 2
Uncheck the Participate
in ASA cluster check box.
Note
Do not uncheck the Configure ASA cluster settings check box; this action clears
all cluster configuration, and also shuts down all interfaces including
the management interface to which ASDM is connected. To restore
connectivity in this case, you need to access the CLI at the console
port.
Step 3
Click Apply.
Deactivate a Data Unit from the Control Unit
To deactivate a data node, perform the following steps.
Note
When an ASA becomes inactive, all data interfaces are shut
down; only the management-only interface can send and receive traffic. To resume
traffic flow, re-enable clustering. The management interface remains up using
the IP address the node received from the cluster IP pool. However if you
reload, and the node is still inactive in the cluster (for example, if you saved
the configuration with clustering disabled), the management interface is
disabled. You must use the console port for any further configuration.
Before you begin
For multiple context mode, perform this procedure in the system
execution space. If you are not already in the System configuration mode in the
Configuration > Device List pane, double-click
System under the active device IP address.
Procedure
Step 1
Choose Configuration > Device Management > High Availability and Scalability > ASA Cluster.
Step 2
Select the data node that you want to remove, and click
Delete.
The data node bootstrap configuration remains intact,
so that you can later re-add the data node without losing your
configuration.
Step 3
Click Apply.
Rejoin the Cluster
If a node was removed from the cluster, for example for a failed interface or if you
manually deactivated a member, you must manually rejoin the cluster.
Before you begin
You must use the console port to reenable clustering. Other interfaces are shut down. The exception is if you manually disabled clustering in ASDM, then you can reenable clustering in ASDM if you did not save
the configuration and reload. After reloading, the management interface is disabled, so console access is the only method
to reenable clustering.
For multiple context mode, perform this procedure in the system execution space. If you are not already in the System configuration
mode in the Configuration > Device List pane, double-click System under the active device IP address.
Make sure the failure is resolved before you try to rejoin the cluster.
Procedure
Step 1
If you still have ASDM access, you can reenable clustering in ASDM by
connecting ASDM to the node you want to reenable.
You cannot reenable clustering for a data node from the control node unless
you add it as a new member.
Choose Configuration > Device Management > High Availability and Scalability > ASA Cluster.
Check the Participate in ASA cluster check box.
Click Apply.
Step 2
If you cannot use ASDM: At the
console, enter cluster configuration mode:
cluster groupname
Example:
ciscoasa(config)# cluster group pod1
Step 3
Enable clustering.
enable
Change the Control Unit
Caution
The best method to change the control node is to disable
clustering on the control node, wait for a new control election, and then
re-enable clustering. If you must specify the exact node you want to become the
control node, use the procedure in this section. Note, however, that for
centralized features, if you force a control node change using this procedure,
then all connections are dropped, and you have to re-establish the connections
on the new control node.
To change the control node, perform the following steps.
Before you begin
For multiple context mode, perform this procedure in the system
execution space. If you are not already in the System configuration mode in the Configuration >
Device List pane, double-click
System under the active device IP address.
From the drop-down list, choose a data node to become
control, and click the button to make it the control node.
Step 3
You are prompted to confirm the control node change.
Click Yes.
Step 4
Quit ASDM, and reconnect using the Main cluster IP
address.
Execute a Command
Cluster-Wide
To send a command to all members in the cluster, or to a specific member, perform the following
steps. Sending a show command to all members collects all
output and displays it on the console of the current unit. (Note that alternatively
there are show commands that you can enter on the control unit to view cluster-wide
statistics.) Other commands, such as capture and
copy, can also take advantage of cluster-wide
execution.
Before you begin
Perform this
procedure at the Command Line Interface tool: choose
Tools > Command Line
Interface.
Procedure
Send a command
to all members, or if you specify the unit name, a specific member:
cluster exec [unitunit_name]
command
Example:
cluster exec show xlate
To view member
names, enter
cluster exec unit
? (to see all names except the current unit), or enter the
show cluster
info command.
Examples
To copy the same capture file from all units in the cluster at the same time to a TFTP server,
enter the following command on the control unit:
Multiple PCAP files,
one from each unit, are copied to the TFTP server. The destination capture file
name is automatically attached with the unit name, such as capture1_asa1.pcap,
capture1_asa2.pcap, and so on. In this example, asa1 and asa2 are cluster unit
names.
The following sample
output for the
cluster exec show
memory command shows memory information for each member in the
cluster:
cluster exec show memory
unit-1-1(LOCAL):******************************************************
Free memory: 108724634538 bytes (92%)
Used memory: 9410087158 bytes ( 8%)
------------- ------------------
Total memory: 118111600640 bytes (100%)
unit-1-3:*************************************************************
Free memory: 108749922170 bytes (92%)
Used memory: 9371097334 bytes ( 8%)
------------- ------------------
Total memory: 118111600640 bytes (100%)
unit-1-2:*************************************************************
Free memory: 108426753537 bytes (92%)
Used memory: 9697869087 bytes ( 8%)
------------- ------------------
Total memory: 118111600640 bytes (100%)
ASA: Monitoring the ASA Cluster on the Firepower 4100/9300 chassis
You can monitor and troubleshoot cluster status and connections.
Monitoring Cluster
Status
See the following
screens for monitoring
cluster status:
Monitoring > ASA Cluster
> Cluster Summary
This pane shows
cluster information about the unit to which you are connected, as well as other
units in the cluster. You can also change the primary unit from this pane.
Cluster Dashboard
On the home page
on the primary unit, you can monitor the cluster using the Cluster Dashboard
and the Cluster Firewall Dashboard.
Capturing Packets
Cluster-Wide
See the following
screen for capturing
packets in a cluster:
Wizards > Packet Capture
Wizard
To support cluster-wide troubleshooting, you can enable capture of
cluster-specific traffic on the control node, which is
then automatically enabled on all of the data nodes in the cluster.
Monitoring Cluster
Resources
See the following
screens for monitoring cluster resources:
Monitoring > ASA Cluster > System Resources
Graphs > CPU
This pane lets you
create graphs or tables showing the CPU utilization across the cluster members.
Monitoring > ASA Cluster > System Resources
Graphs > Memory.
This pane lets you
create graphs or tables showing the Free Memory and Used Memory across the
cluster members.
Monitoring Cluster
Traffic
See the following
screens for monitoring cluster traffic:
This section includes the Load Monitor-Information and Load-Monitor Details panes. Load Monitor-Information shows the traffic load for cluster members for the last interval and also the average over total number of intervals configured
(30 by default). Use the Load-Monitor Details pane to view the value for each measure at each interval.
Monitoring the
Cluster Control Link
See the following screen for monitoring cluster status:
Monitoring > Properties > System Resources Graphs >
Cluster Control Link.
This pane lets you create graphs or tables showing the cluster
control link Receival and Transmittal capacity utilization.
Monitoring Cluster
Routing
See the following
screen for cluster
routing:
Monitoring > Routing > LISP-EID
Table
Shows the ASA
EID table showing EIDs and site IDs.
Monitoring Distributed S2S VPN
See the following screens for monitoring VPN cluster status:
Each node in the cluster generates syslog messages independently. You
can generate syslog messages with identical or different
device IDs to make messages appear to come from the same or different nodes in
the cluster.
Troubleshooting Distributed S2S VPN
Distributed VPN Notifications
You will be notified with messages containing the identified phrases when the following error situations occur on a cluster
running distributed VPN:
Situation
Notification
If an existing or joining cluster data unit is not in distributed
VPN mode when attempting to join the cluster:
New cluster member (member-name) rejected due to vpn mode mismatch.
and
Control node
(control-name) rejects enrollment
request from unit (unit-name) for the reason: the vpn mode
capabilities are not compatible with the control node
configuration
If licensing is not properly configured on a cluster member for Distributed VPN:
ERROR: Control node
requested cluster vpn-mode change to distributed. Unable to
change mode due to missing Carrier
License.
If the time stamp or member ID is invalid in the SPI of a received IKEv2 packet:
Expired SPI received
or
Corrupted SPI detected
If the cluster is unable to create a backup session:
Failed to create the backup for an IKEv2 session.
IKEv2 Initial Contact (IC) processing error:
IKEv2 Negotiation aborted due to ERROR: Stale backup session found on backup
Redistribution problems:
Failed to send session redistribution message to member-name
Failed to receive
session move response from member-name
(control node only)
If the topology changes during redistribution of the sessions:
You may be encountering one of the following situations:
L2L VPN sessions are being distributed to only one of the chassis in a cluster when the N7K Switch is configured with L4port
as a load balancing algorithm using the port-channel load-balance src-dst l4port command. . An example of the cluster session allocation looks like below:
SSP-Cluster/data node(cfg-cluster)# show cluster vpn-sessiondb distribution
Member 0 (unit-1-3): active: 0
Member 1 (unit-2-2): active: 13295; backups at: 0(2536), 2(2769), 3(2495), 4(2835), 5(2660)
Member 2 (unit-2-3): active: 12174; backups at: 0(2074), 1(2687), 3(2207), 4(3084), 5(2122)
Member 3 (unit-2-1): active: 13416; backups at: 0(2419), 1(3013), 2(2712), 4(2771), 5(2501)
Member 4 (unit-1-1): active: 0
Member 5 (unit-1-2): active: 0
Since L2L IKEv2 VPN uses port 500 for both source and destination ports, IKE packets are only sent to one of the links in
the port channel connected between the N7K and the chassis.
Change the N7K load balancing algorithm to IP and L4 port using the port-channel load-balance src-dst ip-l4port. Then the IKE packets are sent to all the links and thus both Firepower9300 chassis.
For a more immediate adjustment, on the control unit of the ASA cluster
execute: cluster redistribute vpn-sessiondb to
redistribute active VPN sessions to the cluster members of the other
chassis.
Examples for ASA Clustering
These examples include typical deployments.
Firewall on a Stick
Data traffic from different security domains are associated with
different VLANs, for example, VLAN 10 for the inside network and VLAN 20 for the
outside network. Each ASA has a single
physical port connected to the external switch or router. Trunking is enabled so
that all packets on the physical link are 802.1q encapsulated. The ASA is the firewall between VLAN 10 and VLAN
20.
When using Spanned EtherChannels, all data links are grouped into one
EtherChannel on the switch side. If the ASA
becomes unavailable, the switch will rebalance traffic between the remaining units.
Traffic Segregation
You may prefer physical separation of traffic between the
inside and outside network.
As shown in the diagram above, there is one Spanned
EtherChannel on the left side that connects to the inside switch, and the other on
the right side to outside switch. You can also create VLAN subinterfaces on each
EtherChannel if desired.
OTV Configuration for Routed Mode Inter-Site Clustering
The success of inter-site clustering for routed mode with Spanned EtherChannels depends on
the proper configuration and monitoring of OTV. OTV plays a major role by forwarding the
packets across the DCI. OTV forwards unicast packets across the DCI only when it learns the
MAC address in its forwarding table. If the MAC address is not learned in the OTV forwarding
table, it will drop the unicast packets.
Sample OTV Configuration
//Sample OTV config:
//3151 – Inside VLAN, 3152 – Outside VLAN, 202 – CCL VLAN
//aaaa.1111.1234 – ASA inside interface global vMAC
//0050.56A8.3D22 – Server MAC
feature ospf
feature otv
mac access-list ALL_MACs
10 permit any any
mac access-list HSRP_VMAC
10 permit aaaa.1111.1234 0000.0000.0000 any
20 permit aaaa.2222.1234 0000.0000.0000 any
30 permit any aaaa.1111.1234 0000.0000.0000
40 permit any aaaa.2222.1234 0000.0000.0000
vlan access-map Local 10
match mac address HSRP_VMAC
action drop
vlan access-map Local 20
match mac address ALL_MACs
action forward
vlan filter Local vlan-list 3151-3152
//To block global MAC with ARP inspection:
arp access-list HSRP_VMAC_ARP
10 deny aaaa.1111.1234 0000.0000.0000 any
20 deny aaaa.2222.1234 0000.0000.0000 any
30 deny any aaaa.1111.1234 0000.0000.0000
40 deny any aaaa.2222.1234 0000.0000.0000
50 permit ip any mac
ip arp inspection filter HSRP_VMAC_ARP 3151-3152
no ip igmp snooping optimise-multicast-flood
vlan 1,202,1111,2222,3151-3152
otv site-vlan 2222
mac-list GMAC_DENY seq 10 deny aaaa.aaaa.aaaa ffff.ffff.ffff
mac-list GMAC_DENY seq 20 deny aaaa.bbbb.bbbb ffff.ffff.ffff
mac-list GMAC_DENY seq 30 permit 0000.0000.0000 0000.0000.0000
route-map stop-GMAC permit 10
match mac-list GMAC_DENY
interface Overlay1
otv join-interface Ethernet8/1
otv control-group 239.1.1.1
otv data-group 232.1.1.0/28
otv extend-vlan 202, 3151
otv arp-nd timeout 60
no shutdown
interface Ethernet8/1
description uplink_to_OTV_cloud
mtu 9198
ip address 10.4.0.18/24
ip igmp version 3
no shutdown
interface Ethernet8/2
interface Ethernet8/3
description back_to_default_vdc_e6/39
switchport
switchport mode trunk
switchport trunk allowed vlan 202,2222,3151-3152
mac packet-classify
no shutdown
otv-isis default
vpn Overlay1
redistribute filter route-map stop-GMAC
otv site-identifier 0x2
//OTV flood not required for ARP inspection:
otv flood mac 0050.56A8.3D22 vlan 3151
OTV Filter Modifications Required Because of Site Failure
If a site goes down, the filters need to be removed from OTV because you do not want to
block the global MAC address anymore. There are some additional configurations required.
You need to add a static entry for the ASA global MAC address on the OTV switch in the site
that is functional. This entry will let the OTV at the other end add these entries on the
overlay interface. This step is required because if the server and client already have the
ARP entry for the ASA, which is the case for existing connections, then they will not send
the ARP again. Therefore, OTV will not get a chance to learn the ASA global MAC address in
its forwarding table. Because OTV does not have the global MAC address in its forwarding
table, and per OTV design it will not flood unicast packets over the overlay interface, then
it will drop the unicast packets to the global MAC address from the server, and the existing
connections will break.
//OTV filter configs when one of the sites is down
mac-list GMAC_A seq 10 permit 0000.0000.0000 0000.0000.0000
route-map a-GMAC permit 10
match mac-list GMAC_A
otv-isis default
vpn Overlay1
redistribute filter route-map a-GMAC
no vlan filter Local vlan-list 3151
//For ARP inspection, allow global MAC:
arp access-list HSRP_VMAC_ARP_Allow
50 permit ip any mac
ip arp inspection filter HSRP_VMAC_ARP_Allow 3151-3152
mac address-table static aaaa.1111.1234 vlan 3151 interface Ethernet8/3
//Static entry required only in the OTV in the functioning Site
When the other site is restored, you need to add the filters back again and remove this
static entry on the OTV. It is very important to clear the dynamic MAC address table on both
the OTVs to clear the overlay entry for the global MAC address.
MAC Address Table Clearing
When a site goes down, and a static entry for the global MAC address is added to OTV, you
need to let the other OTV learn the global MAC address on the overlay interface. After the
other site comes up, these entries should be cleared. Make sure to clear the mac address
table to make sure OTV does not have these entries in its forwarding table.
cluster-N7k6-OTV# show mac address-table
Legend:
* - primary entry, G - Gateway MAC, (R) - Routed MAC, O - Overlay MAC
age - seconds since last seen,+ - primary entry using vPC Peer-Link,
(T) - True, (F) - False
VLAN MAC Address Type age Secure NTFY Ports/SWID.SSID.LID
---------+-----------------+--------+---------+------+----+------------------
G - d867.d900.2e42 static - F F sup-eth1(R)
O 202 885a.92f6.44a5 dynamic - F F Overlay1
* 202 885a.92f6.4b8f dynamic 5 F F Eth8/3
O 3151 0050.5660.9412 dynamic - F F Overlay1
* 3151 aaaa.1111.1234 dynamic 50 F F Eth8/3
OTV ARP Cache Monitoring
OTV maintains an ARP cache to proxy ARP for IP addresses that it learned across the OTV
interface.
cluster-N7k6-OTV# show otv arp-nd-cache
OTV ARP/ND L3->L2 Address Mapping Cache
Overlay Interface Overlay1
VLAN MAC Address Layer-3 Address Age Expires In
3151 0050.5660.9412 10.0.0.2 1w0d 00:00:31
cluster-N7k6-OTV#
Examples for Inter-Site Clustering
The following examples show supported cluster deployments.
Spanned EtherChannel
Routed Mode Example with Site-Specific MAC and
IP Addresses
The following
example shows 2 cluster members at each of 2 data centers placed between the
gateway router and an inside network at each site (East-West insertion). The
cluster members are connected by the cluster control link over the DCI. The
cluster members at each site connect to the local switches using spanned
EtherChannels for both the inside and outside networks. Each EtherChannel is
spanned across all chassis in the cluster.
The data VLANs are extended between the sites using Overlay Transport Virtualization (OTV) (or
something similar). You must add filters blocking the global MAC address to
prevent traffic from traversing the DCI to the other site when the traffic is
destined for the cluster. If the cluster nodes at one site become unreachable,
you must remove the filters so traffic can be sent to the other site’s cluster
nodes. You should use VACLs to filter the global MAC address.For some switches, such as Nexus with the F3-series
line card, you must also use ARP inspection to block ARP packets from the
global MAC address. ARP inspection requires you to set both the site MAC
address and the site IP address on the ASA. If you only configure the site
MAC address be sure to
disable ARP inspection.
The cluster acts as the gateway for the inside networks. The global virtual MAC, which is
shared across all cluster nodes, is used only to receive packets. Outgoing
packets use a site-specific MAC address from each DC cluster. This feature
prevents the switches from learning the same global MAC address from both sites
on two different ports, which causes MAC flapping; instead, they only learn the
site MAC address.
In this scenario:
All egress
packets sent from the cluster use the site MAC address and are localized at the
data center.
All ingress packets to the cluster are sent using the global MAC address, so they can be
received by any of the nodes at both sites; filters at the OTV localize
the traffic within the data center.
Spanned EtherChannel
Transparent Mode North-South Inter-Site Example
The following example shows 2 cluster members at each of 2 data
centers placed between inside and outside routers (North-South insertion). The
cluster members are connected by the cluster control link over the DCI. The
cluster members at each site connect to the local switches using spanned
EtherChannels for the inside and outside. Each EtherChannel is spanned across
all chassis in the cluster.
The inside and outside routers at each data center use OSPF,
which is passed through the transparent ASAs. Unlike MACs, router IPs are
unique on all routers. By assigning a higher cost route across the DCI, traffic
stays within each data center unless all cluster members at a given site go
down. The lower cost route through the ASAs must traverse the same bridge group
at each site for the cluster to maintain asymmetric connections. In the event
of a failure of all cluster members at one site, traffic goes from each router
over the DCI to the cluster members at the other site.
The implementation of the switches at each site can include:
Inter-site VSS, vPC, StackWise, or StackWise Virtual—In this scenario,
you install one switch at Data Center 1, and the other at Data Center 2.
One option is for the cluster nodes at each Data Center to only connect
to the local switch, while the redundant switch traffic goes across the
DCI. In this case, connections are for the most part kept local to each
datacenter. You can optionally connect each node to both switches across
the DCI if the DCI can handle the extra traffic. In this case, traffic
is distributed across the data centers, so it is essential for the DCI
to be very robust.
Local VSS, vPC, StackWise, or StackWise Virtual at each site—For better
switch redundancy, you can install 2 separate redundant switch pairs at
each site. In this case, although the cluster nodes still have a spanned
EtherChannel with Data Center 1 chassis connected only to both local
switches, and Data Center 2 chassis connected to those local switches,
the spanned EtherChannel is essentially “split.” Each local redundant
switch system sees the spanned EtherChannel as a site-local
EtherChannel.
Spanned EtherChannel
Transparent Mode East-West Inter-Site Example
The following
example shows 2 cluster members at each of 2 data centers placed between the
gateway router and two inside networks at each site, the App network and the DB
network (East-West insertion). The cluster members are connected by the cluster
control link over the DCI. The cluster members at each site connect to the
local switches using spanned EtherChannels for both the App and DB networks on
the inside and outside. Each EtherChannel is spanned across all chassis in the
cluster.
The gateway router
at each site uses an FHRP such as HSRP to provide the same destination virtual
MAC and IP addresses at each site. A good practice to avoid unintended MAC
address flapping is to statically add the gateway routers real MAC addresses to
the ASA MAC address table.
Without these entries, if the gateway at site 1 communicates with the gateway
at site 2, that traffic might pass through the ASA and attempt to reach site 2
from the inside interface and cause problems. The data VLANs are extended
between the sites using Overlay Transport Virtualization (OTV) (or something
similar). You must add filters to prevent traffic from traversing the DCI to
the other site when the traffic is destined for the gateway router. If the
gateway router at one site becomes unreachable, you must remove the filters so
traffic can be sent to the other site’s gateway router.
Reference for Clustering
This section includes more information about how clustering operates.
ASA Features and
Clustering
Some ASA features are not supported with ASA clustering, and some are
only supported on the control node. Other features might have caveats for proper
usage.
Unsupported Features
with Clustering
These features cannot
be configured with clustering enabled, and the commands will be rejected.
Unified
Communication features that rely on TLS Proxy
Remote access VPN (SSL VPN and IPsec VPN)
Virtual Tunnel Interfaces (VTIs)
IS-IS routing
The following
application inspections:
CTIQBE
H323, H225,
and RAS
IPsec
passthrough
MGCP
MMP
RTSP
SCCP (Skinny)
WAAS
WCCP
Botnet Traffic
Filter
Auto Update Server
DHCP client,
server, and proxy. DHCP relay is supported.
VPN load balancing
Failover
Integrated Routing and Bridging
Dead Connection Detection (DCD)
FIPS mode
Centralized Features
for Clustering
The following features are only supported on the control node, and are
not scaled for the cluster.
Note
Traffic for centralized features is forwarded from member
nodes to the control node over the cluster control link.
If you use the rebalancing feature, traffic for centralized
features may be rebalanced to non-control nodes before the traffic is classified
as a centralized feature; if this occurs, the traffic is then sent back to the
control node.
For centralized features, if the control node fails, all
connections are dropped, and you have to re-establish the connections on the new
control node.
The following application inspections:
DCERPC
ESMTP
IM
NetBIOS
PPTP
RADIUS
RSH
SNMP
SQLNET
SUNRPC
TFTP
XDMCP
Static route monitoring
Authentication and Authorization for network access.
Accounting is decentralized.
Filtering Services
Site-to-site VPN
In centralized mode, VPN connections are established with the control node of
the cluster only. This is the default mode for
VPN clustering. Site-to-site VPN can also be deployed in Distributed VPN
Mode, where S2S IKEv2 VPN connections are distributed across
nodes.
IGMP multicast control plane protocol processing (data
plane forwarding is distributed across the cluster)
PIM multicast control plane protocol processing (data
plane forwarding is distributed across the cluster)
Dynamic routing
Features Applied to
Individual Units
These features are applied to each ASA node, instead of the cluster as a whole or to the
control node.
QoS—The QoS policy is synced across the cluster as part of configuration replication.
However, the policy is enforced on each node independently. For example,
if you configure policing on output, then the conform rate and conform
burst values are enforced on traffic exiting a particular ASA. In a
cluster with 3 nodes and with traffic evenly distributed, the conform
rate actually becomes 3 times the rate for the cluster.
Threat detection—Threat detection works on each node independently; for example, the top
statistics is node-specific. Port scanning detection, for example, does
not work because scanning traffic will be load-balanced between all
nodes, and one node will not see all traffic.
Resource management—Resource management in multiple context mode is enforced separately on
each node based on local usage.
LISP traffic—LISP traffic on UDP port 4342 is inspected by each receiving node, but is not
assigned a director. Each node adds to the EID table that is shared
across the cluster, but the LISP traffic itself does not participate in
cluster state sharing.
AAA for Network
Access and Clustering
AAA for network access consists of three components: authentication,
authorization, and accounting. Authentication and authorization are implemented
as centralized features on the clustering control node with replication of the
data structures to the cluster data nodes. If a control node is elected, the new
control node will have all the information it needs to continue uninterrupted
operation of the established authenticated users and their associated
authorizations. Idle and absolute timeouts for user authentications are
preserved when a control node change occurs.
Accounting is implemented as a distributed feature in a cluster.
Accounting is done on a per-flow basis, so the cluster node owning a flow will
send accounting start and stop messages to the AAA server when accounting is
configured for a flow.
Connection Settings
Connection limits are enforced cluster-wide (see Configuration > Firewall
> Service Policy page). Each node has an
estimate of the cluster-wide counter values based on broadcast messages. Due to
efficiency considerations, the configured connection limit across the cluster
might not be enforced exactly at the limit number. Each node may overestimate or
underestimate the cluster-wide counter value at any given time. However, the
information will get updated over time in a load-balanced cluster.
FTP and
Clustering
If FTP data channel and control channel flows are owned by
different cluster members, then the data channel owner will periodically send
idle timeout updates to the control channel owner and update the idle timeout
value. However, if the control flow owner is reloaded, and the control flow is
re-hosted, the parent/child flow relationship will not longer be maintained;
the control flow idle timeout will not be updated.
If you use AAA for FTP access, then the control channel flow is
centralized on the control node.
ICMP Inspection
The flow of ICMP and ICMP error packets through the cluster varies depending on
whether ICMP/ICMP error inspection is enabled. Without ICMP inspection, ICMP is
a one-direction flow, and there is no director flow support. With ICMP
inspection, the ICMP flow becomes two-directional and is backed up by a
director/backup flow. One difference for an inspected ICMP flow is in the
director handling of a forwarded packet: the director will forward the ICMP echo
reply packet to the flow owner instead of returning the packet to the forwarder.
Multicast Routing
and Clustering
The control unit handles all multicast routing packets and data packets until fast-path
forwarding is established. After the connection is established, each data unit can
forward multicast data packets.
NAT and
Clustering
NAT can affect the overall throughput of the cluster. Inbound and
outbound NAT packets can be sent to different ASAs in the cluster, because the load balancing algorithm relies on IP addresses
and ports, and NAT causes inbound and outbound packets to have different IP
addresses and/or ports. When a packet arrives at the ASA that is not the NAT owner, it is forwarded over the cluster control link to
the owner, causing large amounts of traffic on the cluster control link. Note
that the receiving node does not create a forwarding flow to the owner, because
the NAT owner may not end up creating a connection for the packet depending on
the results of security and policy checks.
If you still want to use NAT in clustering, then consider the
following guidelines:
PAT with Port Block Allocation—See the following guidelines for this
feature:
Maximum-per-host limit is not a cluster-wide limit, and is enforced on each node
individually. Thus, in a 3-node cluster with the
maximum-per-host limit configured as 1, if the traffic from a
host is load-balanced across all 3 nodes, then it can get
allocated 3 blocks with 1 in each node.
Port blocks created on the backup node from the backup pools are not accounted for when
enforcing the maximum-per-host limit.
On-the-fly PAT rule modifications, where the PAT pool is modified with a completely new
range of IP addresses, will result in xlate backup creation
failures for the xlate backup requests that were still in
transit while the new pool became effective. This behavior is
not specific to the port block allocation feature, and is a
transient PAT pool issue seen only in cluster deployments where
the pool is distributed and traffic is load-balanced across the
cluster nodes.
When operating in a cluster, you cannot simply change the block allocation size. The new
size is effective only after you reload each device in the
cluster. To avoid having to reload each device, we recommend
that you delete all block allocation rules and clear all xlates
related to those rules. You can then change the block size and
recreate the block allocation rules.
NAT pool address distribution for dynamic PAT—When you configure a PAT pool, the cluster
divides each IP address in the pool into port blocks. By default, each
block is 512 ports, but if you configure port block allocation rules,
your block setting is used instead. These blocks are distributed evenly
among the nodes in the cluster, so that each node has one or more blocks
for each IP address in the PAT pool. Thus, you could have as few as one
IP address in a PAT pool for a cluster, if that is sufficient for the
number of PAT’ed connections you expect. Port blocks cover the
1024-65535 port range, unless you configure the option to include the
reserved ports, 1-1023, on the PAT pool NAT rule.
Reusing a PAT pool in multiple rules—To use the same PAT pool in multiple
rules, you must be careful about the interface selection in the rules.
You must either use specific interfaces in all rules, or "any" in all
rules. You cannot mix specific interfaces and "any" across the rules, or
the system might not be able to match return traffic to the right node
in the cluster. Using unique PAT pools per rule is the most reliable
option.
No round-robin—Round-robin for a PAT pool is not supported with
clustering.
No extended PAT—Extended PAT is not supported with clustering.
Dynamic NAT xlates managed by the control node—The control node
maintains and replicates the xlate table to data nodes. When a data node
receives a connection that requires dynamic NAT, and the xlate is not in
the table, it requests the xlate from the control node. The data node
owns the connection.
Stale xlates—The xlate idle time on the connection owner does not get
updated. Thus, the idle time might exceed the idle timeout. An idle
timer value higher than the configured timeout with a refcnt of 0 is an
indication of a stale xlate.
Per-session PAT feature—Although not exclusive to clustering, the
per-session PAT feature improves the scalability of PAT and, for
clustering, allows each data node to own PAT connections; by contrast,
multi-session PAT connections have to be forwarded to and owned by the
control node. By default, all TCP traffic and UDP DNS traffic use a
per-session PAT xlate, whereas ICMP and all other UDP traffic uses
multi-session. You can configure per-session NAT rules to change these
defaults for TCP and UDP, but you cannot configure per-session PAT for
ICMP. For traffic that benefits from multi-session PAT, such as H.323,
SIP, or Skinny, you can disable per-session PAT for the associated TCP
ports (the UDP ports for those H.323 and SIP are already multi-session
by default). For more information about per-session PAT, see the
firewall configuration guide.
No static PAT for the following inspections—
FTP
PPTP
RSH
SQLNET
TFTP
XDMCP
SIP
If you have an extremely large number of NAT rules, over ten thousand, you should enable
the transactional commit model using the asp rule-engine
transactional-commit nat command in the device
CLI. Otherwise, the node might not be able to join the cluster.
Dynamic Routing and
Clustering
The routing process only runs on the control unit, and routes are learned through the control
unit and replicated to secondaries. If a routing packet arrives at a data unit, it is
redirected to the control unit.
Figure 1. Dynamic Routing
After the data units learn the routes from the control unit, each unit makes forwarding decisions
independently.
The OSPF LSA database is not synchronized from the control unit to data units. If there is a
control unit switchover, the neighboring router will detect a restart; the switchover is
not transparent. The OSPF process picks an IP address as its router ID. Although not
required, you can assign a static router ID to ensure a consistent router ID is used
across the cluster. See the OSPF Non-Stop Forwarding feature to address the
interruption.
SCTP and
Clustering
An SCTP association can be created on any node (due to load balancing); its multi-homing
connections must reside on the same node.
SIP Inspection and
Clustering
A control flow can be created on any node (due to load balancing); its
child data flows must reside on the same node.
TLS Proxy configuration is
not supported.
SNMP and
Clustering
An
SNMP agent polls each individual ASA by its Local IP address. You cannot poll consolidated data for
the cluster.
You should always use the Local address, and not the Main cluster IP
address for SNMP polling. If the SNMP agent polls the Main cluster IP address,
if a new control node is elected, the poll to the new control node will fail.
When using SNMPv3 with clustering, if you add a new
cluster node after the initial cluster formation, then SNMPv3 users are not
replicated to the new node.You must re-add them on the
control node to force the users to replicate to the new node, or directly on
the data node.
STUN and
Clustering
STUN inspection is supported in failover and cluster modes, as pinholes are replicated.
However, the transaction ID is not replicated among nodes. In the case where a
node fails after receiving a STUN Request and another node received the STUN
Response, the STUN Response will be dropped.
Syslog and NetFlow and
Clustering
Syslog—Each node in the cluster generates
its own syslog messages. You can configure logging so that each node
uses either the same or a different device ID in the syslog message
header field. For example, the hostname configuration is replicated and
shared by all nodes in the cluster. If you configure logging to use the
hostname as the device ID, syslog messages generated by all nodes look
as if they come from a single node. If you configure logging to use the
local-node name that is assigned in the cluster bootstrap configuration
as the device ID, syslog messages look as if they come from different
nodes.
NetFlow—Each node in the cluster generates its own NetFlow stream. The
NetFlow collector can only treat each ASA as a separate NetFlow
exporter.
Cisco TrustSec and
Clustering
Only the control node learns security group tag (SGT) information. The
control node then populates the SGT to data nodes, and data nodes can make a
match decision for SGT based on the security policy.
VPN and Clustering on the Secure Firewall eXtensible
Operating System (FXOS) Chassis
An ASA FXOS Cluster supports one of two mutually exclusive modes for S2S VPN, centralized or distributed:
Centralized VPN Mode. The default mode. In centralized mode, VPN connections are established
with the control unit of the cluster only.
VPN functionality is limited to the control unit and does not take advantage of the cluster
high availability capabilities. If the control unit fails, all existing VPN
connections are lost, and VPN connected users see a disruption in service. When
a new control unit is elected, you must reestablish the VPN connections.
When you connect a VPN tunnel to a Spanned interface address, connections are automatically
forwarded to the control unit. VPN-related keys and certificates are replicated
to all units.
Distributed VPN Mode. In this mode, S2S IPsec IKEv2 VPN connections are distributed across members of an ASA cluster providing
scalability. Distributing VPN connections across the members of a cluster allows both the capacity and throughput of the cluster
to be fully utilized, significantly scaling VPN support beyond Centralized VPN capabilities.
Note
Centralized VPN clustering mode supports S2S IKEv1 and S2S IKEv2.
Distributed VPN clustering mode is supported on the Firepower 9300 only.
Remote access VPN is not supported in centralized or distributed VPN clustering mode.
Performance Scaling
Factor
When you combine multiple units into a cluster, you can expect the total cluster performance to
be approximately 80% of the maximum combined throughput.
For example, for TCP throughput, the Firepower 9300 with 3 SM-40 modules can handle approximately
135 Gbps of real world firewall traffic when running alone. For 2 chassis, the maximum
combined throughput will be approximately 80% of 270 Gbps (2 chassis x 135 Gbps): 216
Gbps.
Control Unit Election
Members of the cluster communicate over the cluster control link to elect a control unit as
follows:
When you deploy
the cluster, each unit broadcasts an election request every 3 seconds.
Any other units
with a higher priority respond to the election request; the priority is set
when you deploy the cluster and is not configurable.
If after 45 seconds, a unit does not receive a response from another unit with a higher
priority, then it becomes the control unit.
Note
If multiple units tie for the highest priority, the
cluster unit name and then the serial number is used to determine the
control unit.
If a unit later joins the cluster with a higher priority, it does not automatically become
the control unit; the existing control unit always remains as the control unit
unless it stops responding, at which point a new control unit is elected.
In a "split brain" scenario when there are temporarily multiple control units,
then the unit with highest priority retains the role while the other units
return to data unit roles.
Note
You can manually force a unit to become the control unit. For centralized features, if you
force a control unit change, then all connections are dropped, and you have to
re-establish the connections on the new control unit.
High Availability
Within the Cluster
Clustering provides
high availability by monitoring chassis, unit, and interface health and by
replicating connection states between units.
Chassis-Application
Monitoring
Chassis-application health monitoring is always enabled. The Firepower 4100/9300 chassis supervisor checks the ASA application periodically (every second). If the ASA is up and cannot communicate with the Firepower 4100/9300 chassis supervisor for 3 seconds, the ASA generates a syslog message and leaves the cluster.
If the Firepower 4100/9300 chassis supervisor cannot communicate with the application after 45 seconds, it reloads the ASA. If the ASA cannot communicate with the supervisor, it removes itself from the cluster.
Unit Health
Monitoring
Each unit periodically sends a broadcast keepaliveheartbeat packet over the
cluster control link. If the control node does not receive any keepaliveheartbeat packets or other
packets from a data node within the configurable timeout period, then the control node removes the data node
from the cluster. If the data nodes do not receive packets from the control node,
then a new control node is elected from the remaining node.
If nodes cannot reach each other over the cluster control link because of a network failure
and not because a node has actually failed, then the cluster may go into a "split
brain" scenario where isolated data nodes will elect their own control nodes. For
example, if a router fails between two cluster locations, then the original control
node at location 1 will remove the location 2 data nodes from the cluster.
Meanwhile, the nodes at location 2 will elect their own control node and form their
own cluster. Note that asymmetric traffic may fail in this scenario. After the
cluster control link is restored, then the control node that has the higher priority
will keep the control node’s role. See Control Unit Election for more information.
Interface
Monitoring
Each node monitors the link status of all hardware interfaces in use, and reports status changes
to the control node. For clustering on
multiple chassis, Spanned EtherChannels use the cluster Link Aggregation Control
Protocol (cLACP). Each chassis monitors the link status and the cLACP protocol
messages to determine if the port is still active in the EtherChannel, and informs
the ASA application if the interface is down. When you enable health monitoring, all physical interfaces are monitored by
default (including the main EtherChannel for EtherChannel interfaces). Only named
interfaces that are in an Up state can be monitored. For example, all member ports of an
EtherChannel must fail before a named EtherChannel is removed from the cluster (depending on your minimum port bundling setting). You can optionally disable monitoring per
interface.
If a monitored interface fails on a particular node, but it is active on other nodes, then the
node is removed from the cluster. The amount of time before the ASA removes a node from the cluster depends on whether the node is an established member
or is joining the cluster. The ASA does not monitor interfaces for the first 90 seconds that a node joins the cluster.
Interface status changes during this time will not cause the ASA to be removed from the cluster. For an established member, the node is removed after
500 ms.
For clustering on multiple chassis, if you add or
delete an EtherChannel from the cluster, interface health-monitoring is suspended for 95
seconds to ensure that you have time to make the changes on each chassis.
Decorator
Application Monitoring
When you install a decorator application on an interface, such as the Radware DefensePro application, then both the ASA and the decorator application must be operational to remain in the cluster. The unit does not join the cluster until both
applications are operational. Once in the cluster, the unit monitors the decorator application health every 3 seconds. If
the decorator application is down, the unit is removed from the cluster.
Status After
Failure
When a node in the cluster fails, the connections hosted by that node are
seamlessly transferred to other nodes; state information for traffic flows is
shared over the control node's cluster control link.
If the control node fails, then another member of the cluster with the
highest priority (lowest number) becomes the control node.
The ASA automatically tries to rejoin the cluster, depending on the failure event.
Note
When the ASA becomes inactive and fails to automatically rejoin the cluster, all data
interfaces are shut down; only the management-only interface
can send and receive traffic. The
management interface remains up using the IP address the node received
from the cluster IP pool. However if you reload, and the node is still
inactive in the cluster, the management interface is disabled. You must
use the console port for any further configuration.
Rejoining the
Cluster
After a cluster member
is removed from the cluster, how it can rejoin the cluster depends on why it
was removed:
Failed cluster
control link when initially joining—After you resolve the problem with
the cluster control link, you must manually rejoin the cluster by re-enabling
clustering.
Failed cluster
control link after joining the cluster—The ASA automatically tries to rejoin
every 5 minutes, indefinitely. This behavior is configurable.
Failed data
interface—The ASA automatically tries to rejoin at 5 minutes, then at 10
minutes, and finally at 20 minutes. If the join is not successful after 20
minutes, then the ASA disables clustering. After you resolve the problem with
the data interface, you have to manually enable clustering.This behavior is
configurable.
Failed unit—If the
unit was removed from the cluster because of a unit health check failure, then
rejoining the cluster depends on the source of the failure. For example, a
temporary power failure means the unit will rejoin the cluster when it starts
up again as long as the cluster control link is up. The unit attempts to rejoin
the cluster every 5 seconds.
Failed Chassis-Application Communication—When the ASA detects that the chassis-application
health has recovered, the ASA tries to rejoin the cluster immediately. Alternatively, you can configure the ASA to use
the same rejoin settings as for internal errors (below).
Failed decorator application—The ASA rejoins the cluster when it senses that the decorator application is back up.
Internal error—Internal failures include: application sync timeout; inconsistent application statuses; and so on. A unit will attempt to rejoin the cluster automatically at the following intervals: 5 minutes, 10 minutes, and then 20 minutes.
This behavior is configurable.
Data Path Connection
State Replication
Every connection has one owner and at least one backup owner in
the cluster. The backup owner does not take over the connection in the event of
a failure; instead, it stores TCP/UDP state information, so that the connection
can be seamlessly transferred to a new owner in case of a failure. The backup
owner is usually also the director.
Some traffic requires state information above the TCP or UDP
layer. See the following table for clustering support or lack of support for
this kind of traffic.
Table 3. Features Replicated Across the Cluster
Traffic
State Support
Notes
Up time
Yes
Keeps track of the system up time.
ARP Table
Yes
—
MAC address table
Yes
—
User Identity
Yes
Includes AAA rules (uauth).
IPv6 Neighbor database
Yes
—
Dynamic routing
Yes
—
SNMP Engine ID
No
—
Distributed VPN (Site-to-Site) for Firepower 4100/9300
Yes
Backup
session becomes the active session, then a new backup session is created.
How the Cluster
Manages Connections
Connections can be load-balanced to multiple nodes of the cluster.
Connection roles determine how connections are handled in both normal operation
and in a high availability situation.
Connection
Roles
See the following roles defined for each connection:
Owner—Usually, the node that initially receives the connection. The
owner maintains the TCP state and processes packets. A connection has
only one owner. If the original owner fails, then when new nodes receive
packets from the connection, the director chooses a new owner from those
nodes.
Backup owner—The node that stores TCP/UDP state information received from the owner, so that
the connection can be seamlessly transferred to a new owner in case of a
failure. The backup owner does not take over the connection in the event
of a failure. If the owner becomes unavailable, then the first node to
receive packets from the connection (based on load balancing) contacts
the backup owner for the relevant state information so it can become the
new owner.
As long as the director (see below) is not the same node as the owner, then the director is
also the backup owner. If the owner chooses itself as the director, then
a separate backup owner is chosen.
For clustering on the Firepower 9300, which can include up to 3 cluster nodes in one chassis, if the backup owner is on the
same chassis as the owner, then an additional backup owner will be chosen from another chassis to protect flows from a chassis
failure.
If you enable director localization for inter-site clustering, then
there are two backup owner roles: the local backup and the global
backup. The owner always chooses a local backup at the same site as
itself (based on site ID). The global backup can be at any site, and
might even be the same node as the local backup. The owner sends
connection state information to both backups.
If you enable site redundancy, and the backup owner is at the
same site as the owner, then an additional backup owner will be chosen from
another site to protect flows from a site failure. Chassis backup and site
backup are independent, so in some cases a flow will have both a chassis backup
and a site backup.
Director—The node that handles owner lookup requests from forwarders.
When the owner receives a new connection, it chooses a director based on
a hash of the source/destination IP address and ports (see below for
ICMP hash details), and sends a message to the director to register the
new connection. If packets arrive at any node other than the owner, the
node queries the director about which node is the owner so it can
forward the packets. A connection has only one director. If a director
fails, the owner chooses a new director.
As long as the director is not the same node as the owner, then the director is also the
backup owner (see above). If the owner chooses itself as the director,
then a separate backup owner is chosen.
If you enable director localization for inter-site clustering, then
there are two director roles: the local director and the global
director. The owner always chooses a local director at the same site as
itself (based on site ID). The global director can be at any site, and
might even be the same node as the local director. If the original owner
fails, then the local director chooses a new connection owner at the
same site.
ICMP/ICMPv6 hash details:
For Echo packets, the source port is the ICMP identifier, and the
destination port is 0.
For Reply packets, the source port is 0, and the destination port
is the ICMP identifier.
For other packets, both source and destination ports are 0.
Forwarder—A node that forwards packets to the owner. If a forwarder
receives a packet for a connection it does not own, it queries the
director for the owner, and then establishes a flow to the owner for any
other packets it receives for this connection. The director can also be
a forwarder. If you enable director
localization, then the forwarder always queries the local director.
The forwarder only queries the global director if the local director
does not know the owner, for example, if a cluster member receives
packets for a connection that is owned on a different site.
Note that if a forwarder receives the SYN-ACK packet, it can derive
the owner directly from a SYN cookie in the packet, so it does not need
to query the director. (If you disable TCP sequence randomization, the
SYN cookie is not used; a query to the director is required.) For
short-lived flows such as DNS and ICMP, instead of querying, the
forwarder immediately sends the packet to the director, which then sends
them to the owner. A connection can have multiple forwarders; the most
efficient throughput is achieved by a good load-balancing method where
there are no forwarders and all packets of a connection are received by
the owner.
Note
We do not recommend disabling TCP sequence randomization when using
clustering. There is a small chance that some TCP sessions won't be
established, because the SYN/ACK packet might be dropped.
Fragment Owner—For fragmented packets, cluster nodes that receive a fragment determine a
fragment owner using a hash of the fragment source IP address,
destination IP address, and the packet ID. All fragments are then
forwarded to the fragment owner over the cluster control link. Fragments
may be load-balanced to different cluster nodes, because only the first
fragment includes the 5-tuple used in the switch load balance hash.
Other fragments do not contain the source and destination ports and may
be load-balanced to other cluster nodes. The fragment owner temporarily
reassembles the packet so it can determine the director based on a hash
of the source/destination IP address and ports. If it is a new
connection, the fragment owner will register to be the connection owner.
If it is an existing connection, the fragment owner forwards all
fragments to the provided connection owner over the cluster control
link. The connection owner will then reassemble all fragments.
When a connection uses Port Address Translation (PAT), then the
PAT type (per-session or multi-session) influences which member of the cluster
becomes the owner of a new connection:
Per-session PAT—The owner is the node that receives the initial packet in the connection.
By default,
TCP and DNS UDP traffic use per-session PAT.
Multi-session PAT—The owner is always the control node. If a multi-session PAT connection is
initially received by a data node, then the data node forwards the
connection to the control node.
By default, UDP (except for DNS UDP) and ICMP traffic use multi-session PAT, so these
connections are always owned by the control node.
You can change the per-session PAT defaults for TCP and UDP so
connections for these protocols are handled per-session or multi-session
depending on the configuration. For ICMP, you cannot change from the default
multi-session PAT. For more information about per-session PAT, see the firewall
configuration guide.
New Connection
Ownership
When a new connection is directed to a node of the cluster via load balancing, that node owns
both directions of the connection. If any connection packets arrive at a different node,
they are forwarded to the owner node over the cluster control link. If a reverse flow
arrives at a different node, it is redirected back to the original node.
Sample Data Flow for TCP
The following example shows the establishment of a new
connection.
The SYN packet originates from the client and is delivered to one ASA (based on the load balancing method), which becomes the owner. The
owner creates a flow, encodes owner information into a SYN cookie, and
forwards the packet to the server.
The SYN-ACK packet originates from the server and is delivered to a
different ASA (based on the load balancing method). This ASA is the forwarder.
Because the forwarder does not own the connection, it decodes
owner information from the SYN cookie, creates a forwarding flow to the owner,
and forwards the SYN-ACK to the owner.
The owner sends a state update to the director, and forwards the
SYN-ACK to the client.
The director receives the state update from the owner, creates a
flow to the owner, and records the TCP state information as well as the owner.
The director acts as the backup owner for the connection.
Any subsequent packets delivered to the forwarder will be
forwarded to the owner.
If packets are delivered to any additional nodes, it will query the
director for the owner and establish a flow.
Any state change for the flow results in a state update from the
owner to the director.
Sample Data Flow for ICMP and UDP
The following example shows the establishment of a new connection.
Figure 2. ICMP and UDP Data Flow
The first UDP packet originates from the client and is delivered
to one ASA (based on the load balancing method).
The node that received the first packet queries the director node that is chosen based on a
hash of the source/destination IP address and ports.
The director finds no existing flow, creates a director flow and forwards the packet back
to the previous node. In other words, the director has elected an owner
for this flow.
The owner creates the flow, sends a state update to the director, and
forwards the packet to the server.
The second UDP packet originates from the server and is delivered to the
forwarder.
The forwarder queries the director for ownership information. For
short-lived flows such as DNS, instead of querying, the forwarder
immediately sends the packet to the director, which then sends it to the
owner.
The director replies to the forwarder with ownership information.
The forwarder creates a forwarding flow to record owner information and
forwards the packet to the owner.
The owner forwards the packet to the client.
Rebalancing New TCP Connections Across the Cluster
If the load balancing capabilities of the upstream or downstream
routers result in unbalanced flow distribution, you can configure new
connection rebalancing so nodes with higher new connections per second will
redirect new TCP flows to other nodes. No existing flows will be moved to
other nodes.
Because this command only rebalances based on connections
per second, the total number of established connections on each node is not
considered, and the total number of connections may not be equal.
Once a connection is offloaded to a different node, it becomes an asymmetric
connection.
Do not configure connection
rebalancing for inter-site topologies; you do not want new connections
rebalanced to cluster members at a different site.
History for ASA Clustering on the Firepower 4100/9300
Feature Name
Version
Feature Information
Configurable delay to rejoin cluster after chassis heartbeat failure
(Firepower 4100/9300)
9.20(2)
By default, if the chassis heartbeat fails and then recovers, the
node rejoins the cluster immediately. However, if you configure the
health-check
chassis-heartbeat-delay-rejoin command, it
will rejoin according to the settings of the
health-check system auto-rejoin
command.
New/Modified screens: Configuration > Device Management > High Availability and Scalability > ASA Cluster > Auto Rejoin
Configurable cluster keepalive interval for flow status
9.20(1)
The flow owner sends keepalives (clu_keepalive messages) and updates
(clu_update messages) to the director and backup owner to refresh
the flow state. You can now set the keepalive interval. The default
is 15 seconds, and you can set the interval between 15 and 55
seconds. You may want to set the interval to be longer to reduce the
amount of traffic on the cluster control link.
New/Modified screens: Configuration > Device Management > High Availability and Scalability > ASA Cluster > Cluster Configuration
Removal of biased language
9.19(1)
Commands, command output, and syslog messages that contained the
terms "Master" and "Slave" have been changed to "Control" and
"Data."
New/Modified commands: cluster
control-node, enable
as-data-node, prompt,
show cluster history,
show cluster info
Improved PAT port block allocation for clustering on the Firepower 4100/9300
9.16(1)
The improved PAT port block allocation ensures that the control unit
keeps ports in reserve for joining nodes, and proactively reclaims
unused ports. To best optimize the allocation, you can set the
maximum nodes you plan to have in the cluster using the
cluster-member-limit command. The
control unit can then allocate port blocks to the planned number of
nodes, and it will not have to reserve ports for extra nodes you
don't plan to use. The default is 16 nodes. You can also monitor
syslog 747046 to ensure that there are enough ports available for a
new node.
New/Modified screens: Configuration > Device Management > High Availability and Scalability > ASA Cluster > Cluster Configuration > Cluster Member Limit field
show cluster history command
improvements
9.16(1)
We have added additional outputs for the show cluster
history command.
New/Modified commands: show cluster history
brief, show cluster history
latest, show cluster history
reverse, show cluster history
time
Configuration sync to data units in parallel
9.14(1)
The control unit now syncs configuration changes with data units in parallel by default.
Formerly, synching occurred sequentially.
Messages for cluster join failure or eviction added to
show cluster history
9.14(1)
New messages were added to the show cluster history command for
when a cluster unit either fails to join the cluster or leaves the
cluster.
New/Modified commands: show cluster
history
New/Modified screens: none.
Initiator and responder information for Dead Connection Detection
(DCD), and DCD support in a cluster.
9.13(1)
If you enable Dead Connection Detection (DCD), you can use the
show conn detail command to get
information about the initiator and responder. Dead Connection
Detection allows you to maintain an inactive connection, and the
show conn output tells you how
often the endpoints have been probed. In addition, DCD is now
supported in a cluster.
No modified screens.
Monitor the traffic load for a cluster
9.13(1)
You can now monitor the traffic load for cluster members, including total connection count, CPU and memory usage, and buffer
drops. If the load is too high, you can choose to manually disable clustering on the unit if the remaining units can handle
the load, or adjust the load balancing on the external switch. This feature is enabled by default.
When a data unit has the same configuration as the control unit, it will skip syncing the
configuration and will join faster. This feature is enabled by
default. This feature is configured on each unit, and is not
replicated from the control unit to the data unit.
Note
Some configuration commands are not compatible with accelerated cluster joining; if these commands are present on the unit,
even if accelerated cluster joining is enabled, configuration syncing will always occur. You must remove the incompatible
configuration for accelerated cluster joining to work. Use the show cluster info unit-join-acceleration incompatible-config to view incompatible configuration.
The ASA now generates gratuitous ARP (GARP) packets to keep the switching infrastructure up to date: the highest priority
member at each site periodically generates GARP traffic for the global MAC/IP addresses. When using per-site MAC and IP addresses,
packets sourced from the cluster use a site-specific MAC address and IP address, while packets received by the cluster use
a global MAC address and IP address. If traffic is not generated from the global MAC address periodically, you could experience
a MAC address timeout on your switches for the global MAC address. After a timeout, traffic destined for the global MAC address
will be flooded across the entire switching infrastructure, which can cause performance and security concerns. GARP is enabled
by default when you set the site ID for each unit and the site MAC address for each Spanned EtherChannel.
New/Modified screens: Configuration > Device Management > High Availability and Scalability > ASA Cluster > Cluster Configuration > Site Periodic GARP field
Parallel cluster joining of units per Firepower 9300 chassis
9.10(1)
For the Firepower 9300, this feature ensures that the security modules in a chassis join the cluster simultaneously, so that
traffic is evenly distributed between the modules. If a module joins very much in advance of other modules, it can receive
more traffic than desired, because the other modules cannot yet share the load.
New/modified screens:
Configuration > Device Management > High Availability and Scalability > ASA Cluster
New/Modified options: Parallel Join of Units Per Chassis area
Cluster control link customizable IP Address for the Firepower 4100/9300
9.10(1)
By default, the cluster control link uses the 127.2.0.0/16 network. You can now set the network when you deploy the cluster
in FXOS. The chassis auto-generates the cluster control link interface IP address for each unit based on the chassis ID and
slot ID: 127.2.chassis_id.slot_id. However, some networking deployments do not allow 127.2.0.0/16 traffic to pass. Therefore, you can now set a custom /16
subnet for the cluster control link in FXOS except for loopback (127.0.0.0/8) and multicast (224.0.0.0/4) addresses.
New/modified chassis manager screens:
Logical Devices > Add Device > Cluster Information
New/Modified options: CCL Subnet IP field
Cluster interface debounce time now applies to interfaces changing from a down state to an up state
9.10(1)
When an interface status update occurs, the ASA waits the number of milliseconds specified in the health-check monitor-interface debounce-time command or the ASDM Configuration > Device Management > High Availability and Scalability > ASA Cluster screen before marking the interface as failed and the unit is removed from the cluster. This feature now applies to interfaces
changing from a down state to an up state. For example, in the case of an EtherChannel that transitions from a down state
to an up state (for example, the switch reloaded, or the switch enabled an EtherChannel), a longer debounce time can prevent
the interface from appearing to be failed on a cluster unit just because another cluster unit was faster at bundling the ports.
We did not modify any screens.
Automatically rejoin the cluster after an internal failure
9.9(2)
Formerly, many error conditions caused a cluster unit to be removed from the cluster, and you were required to manually rejoin
the cluster after resolving the issue. Now, a unit will attempt to rejoin the cluster automatically at the following intervals
by default: 5 minutes, 10 minutes, and then 20 minutes. These values are configurable. Internal failures include: application
sync timeout; inconsistent application statuses; and so on.
New or modified screen: Configuration > Device Management > High Availability and Scalability > ASA Cluster > Auto Rejoin
Show transport related statistics for cluster reliable transport protocol messages
9.9(2)
You can now view per-unit cluster reliable transport buffer usage so you can identify packet drop issues when the buffer is
full in the control plane.
New or modified command: show cluster info transport cp detail
cluster remove unit command behavior
matches no enable behavior
9.9(1)
The cluster remove unit command now removes
a unit from the cluster until you manually reenable clustering or
reload, similar to the no enable command.
Previously, if you redeployed the bootstrap configuration from FXOS,
clustering would be reenabled. Now, the disabled status persists
even in the case of a bootstrap configuration redeployment.
Reloading the ASA, however, will reenable clustering.
New/Modified screen: Configuration > Device Management > High Availability and
Scalability > ASA Cluster
Improved chassis health check failure detection for the chassis
9.9(1)
You can now configure a lower holdtime for the chassis health check: 100 ms. The previous minimum was 300 ms. Note that the
minimum combined time (interval x retry-count) cannot be less than 600 ms.
New or modified command: app-agent heartbeat interval
No ASDM support.
Inter-site redundancy for clustering
9.9(1)
Inter-site redundancy ensures that a backup owner for a traffic flow will always be at the other site from the owner. This
feature guards against site failure.
New or modified screen: Configuration > Device Management > High Availability and Scalability > ASA Cluster
Distributed Site-to-Site VPN with clustering on the Firepower 9300
9.9(1)
An ASA cluster on the Firepower 9300 supports Site-to-Site VPN in distributed mode.
Distributed mode provides the ability to have many Site-to-Site
IPsec IKEv2 VPN connections distributed across members of an ASA
cluster, not just on the control unit (as in centralized mode). This
significantly scales VPN support beyond Centralized VPN capabilities
and provides high availability. Distributed S2S VPN runs on a
cluster of up to two chassis, each containing up to three modules
(six total cluster members), each module supporting up to 6K active
sessions (12K total), for a maximum of approximately 36K active
sessions (72K total).
Improved cluster unit health-check failure detection
9.8(1)
You can now configure a lower holdtime for the unit health check: .3 seconds minimum. The previous minimum was .8 seconds.
This feature changes the unit health check messaging scheme to heartbeats in the data plane from keepalives in the control plane. Using heartbeats improves the reliability and the responsiveness of clustering by not being susceptible
to control plane CPU hogging and scheduling delays. Note that configuring a lower holdtime increases cluster control link
messaging activity. We suggest that you analyze your network before you configure a low holdtime; for example, make sure a
ping from one unit to another over the cluster control link returns within the holdtime/3, because there will be three heartbeat messages during one holdtime interval. If you downgrade your ASA software after
setting the hold time to .3 - .7, this setting will revert to the default of 3 seconds because the new setting is unsupported.
We modified the following screen: Configuration > Device Management > High Availability and Scalability > ASA Cluster
Configurable debounce time to mark an interface as failed for the Firepower 4100/9300 chassis
9.8(1)
You can now configure the debounce time before the ASA considers an interface to be failed, and the unit is removed from the
cluster. This feature allows for faster detection of interface failures. Note that configuring a lower debounce time increases
the chances of false-positives. When an interface status update occurs, the ASA waits the number of milliseconds specified
before marking the interface as failed and the unit is removed from the cluster. The default debounce time is 500 ms, with
a range of 300 ms to 9 seconds.
New or modified screen: Configuration > Device Management > High Availability and Scalability > ASA Cluster
Inter-site clustering improvement for the ASA on the Firepower 4100/9300 chassis
9.7(1)
You can now configure the site ID for each Firepower 4100/9300 chassis when you deploy the ASA cluster. Previously, you had to configure the site ID within the ASA application; this new feature
eases initial deployment. Note that you can no longer set the site ID within the ASA configuration. Also, for best compatibility
with inter-site clustering, we recommend that you upgrade to ASA 9.7(1) and FXOS 2.1.1, which includes several improvements
to stability and performance.
We modified the following screen:
Configuration > Device
Management > High Availability and Scalability > ASA
Cluster > Cluster Configuration
Director
localization: inter-site clustering improvement for data centers
9.7(1)
To improve
performance and keep traffic within a site for inter-site clustering for data
centers, you can enable director localization. New connections are typically
load-balanced and owned by cluster members within a given site. However, the
ASA assigns the director role to a member at
any
site. Director localization enables additional director roles: a local director
at the same site as the owner, and a global director that can be at any site.
Keeping the owner and director at the same site improves performance. Also, if
the original owner fails, the local director chooses a new connection owner at
the same site. The global director is used if a cluster member receives packets
for a connection that is owned on a different site.
We modified the following screen:
Configuration > Device
Management > High Availability and Scalability > Cluster
Configuration
Support for 16 chassis for the Firepower 4100 series
9.6(2)
You can now add up to 16 chassis to the cluster for the Firepower 4100 series.
We did not modify any screens.
Support for the Firepower 4100 series
9.6(1)
With FXOS 1.1.4, the ASA supports inter-chassis clustering on the Firepower 4100 series for up to 6 chassis.
We did not modify any screens.
Support for site-specific IP addresses in Routed, Spanned EtherChannel mode
9.6(1)
For inter-site clustering in routed mode with Spanned EtherChannels, you can now configure site-specific IP addresess in addition
to site-specific MAC addresses. The addition of site IP addresses allows you to use ARP inspection on the Overlay Transport
Virtualization (OTV) devices to prevent ARP responses from the global MAC address from traveling over the Data Center Interconnect
(DCI), which can cause routing problems. ARP inspection is required for some switches that cannot use VACLs to filter MAC
addresses.
We modified the following screen: Configuration > Device Setup > Interface Settings > Interfaces > Add/Edit EtherChannel Interface > Advanced
Inter-chassis clustering for 16 modules, and inter-site clustering for the Firepower 9300 ASA application
9.5(2.1)
With FXOS 1.1.3, you can now enable inter-chassis, and by extension inter-site clustering. You can include up to 16 modules.
For example, you can use 1 module in 16 chassis, or 2 modules in 8 chassis, or any combination that provides a maximum of
16 modules.
We did not modify any screens.
Site-specific MAC addresses for inter-site clustering support for Spanned EtherChannel in Routed firewall mode
9.5(2)
You can now use inter-site clustering for Spanned EtherChannels in routed mode. To avoid MAC address flapping, configure a
site ID for each cluster member so that a site-specific MAC address for each interface can be shared among a site’s units.
We modified the following screen: Configuration > Device Management > High Availability and Scalability > ASA Cluster > Cluster Configuration
ASA cluster customization of the auto-rejoin behavior when an interface or the cluster control link fails
9.5(2)
You can now customize the auto-rejoin behavior when an interface or the cluster control link fails.
We introduced the following screen: Configuration > Device Management > High Availability and Scalability > ASA Cluster > Auto Rejoin
The ASA cluster supports GTPv1 and GTPv2
9.5(2)
The ASA cluster now supports GTPv1 and GTPv2 inspection.
We did not modify any screens.
Cluster replication delay for TCP connections
9.5(2)
This feature helps eliminate the “unnecessary work” related to short-lived flows by delaying the director/backup flow creation.
We introduced the following screen: Configuration > Device Management > High Availability and Scalability > ASA Cluster Replication
LISP Inspection for Inter-Site Flow Mobility
9.5(2)
Cisco Locator/ID Separation Protocol (LISP) architecture separates the device identity from its location into two different
numbering spaces, making server migration transparent to clients. The ASA can inspect LISP traffic for location changes and
then use this information for seamless clustering operation; the ASA cluster members inspect LISP traffic passing between
the first hop router and the egress tunnel router (ETR) or ingress tunnel router (ITR), and then change the flow owner to
be at the new site.
We introduced or modified the following screens:
Configuration > Device Management > High Availability and Scalability > ASA Cluster > Cluster Configuration
Configuration > Firewall > Service Policy Rules > Protocol Inspection
Configuration > Firewall > Service Policy Rules > Cluster
Monitoring > Routing > LISP-EID Table
Carrier Grade NAT enhancements now supported in failover and ASA clustering
9.5(2)
For carrier-grade or large-scale PAT, you can allocate a block of ports for each host, rather than have NAT allocate one port
translation at a time (see RFC 6888). This feature is now supported in failover and ASA cluster deployments.
We did not modify any screens.
Configurable level for clustering trace entries
9.5(2)
By default, all levels of clustering events are included in the trace buffer, including many low level events. To limit the
trace to higher level events, you can set the minimum trace level for the cluster.
We did not modify any screens.
Intra-chassis ASA Clustering for the Firepower 9300
9.4(1.150)
You can cluster up to 3 security modules within the Firepower 9300 chassis. All modules in the chassis must belong to the
cluster.
We introduced the following screen: Configuration > Device Management > High Availability and Scalability > ASA Cluster Replication
)
). You can later reenable it using the Slider
disabled (
).
). You can then deploy a standalone logical device, a new cluster, or even add a new logical device to the same cluster.
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