Hardware > Security Appliances [Enabling and Editing High Availability (HA)]

Who can Modify this feature?

• Partner
• Company/Network Admins with write and read access
• Meter Support

Understanding Security Appliance High Availability (HA)

High Availability (HA) adds resilience to your network by deploying a pair of Meter Security Appliances (SAs). If your primary SA experiences a hardware issue, a secondary, backup SA automatically takes over to minimize downtime.

This article explains how HA works, how to monitor it, and provides details on setup and requirements.

How High Availability Works

HA pairs consist of a primary and a backup Security Appliance connected directly to each other and your network.

1. Constant Monitoring: The primary and backup SAs constantly monitor each other's status via a dedicated connection.
2. Automatic Failover: If the backup SA detects a problem with the primary (like a hardware failure or unresponsiveness), it automatically assumes control of network operations.
3. Configuration Sync: The backup SA maintains a real-time copy of the primary's configuration. This ensures a smooth transition without needing manual reconfiguration during a failover event.

Important Note on Failover:

• Automatic Transition: The failover process does not require you to take action and is designed to be automatic.
• Non-Stateful Failover: Currently, the HA failover is non-stateful. This means active network sessions (like large downloads, VPN tunnels, or video calls) will be briefly interrupted and need to re-establish when the backup takes over. Stateful failover, which aims to preserve these sessions, is planned for a future release.

Monitoring HA Status

You can easily check the status of your HA pair:

• Security Appliances Page: Navigate to Hardware > Security Appliances. You will see status indicators for each appliance, showing which is Active (Primary) and which is Ready (Backup).
• Event Logs: Failover events are recorded in the logs. Navigate to Logs > Events to view details of any HA transitions.

Setup and Configuration

Note: Meter handles the physical installation and initial configuration of your HA pair to ensure optimal setup. The following dashboard information is primarily relevant for partners managing the installation or for understanding the configuration details.

While Meter configures HA, you can view the settings in your Meter Dashboard:

1. Log in to dashboard.meter.com.
2. Navigate to Hardware > Security Appliances.
3. Select the primary appliance.
4. In the Actions menu (usually top-right), you might see an option like "Edit high availability" (depending on permissions and setup status).

This panel displays the HA configuration details:

• Enable high availability: Shows if HA is active (Toggle ON).
• Primary interface: The specific LAN port on the primary SA used for the direct HA link.
• Backup interface: The corresponding LAN port on the backup SA for the direct HA link.
• Advertisement interval (ms): How frequently (in milliseconds) the backup checks the primary's status. Default is typically 300ms.
• Advertisement VLAN: The dedicated network segment (VLAN) used for communication between the SAs. Meter usually creates this automatically during setup.

Once enabled, you can see the status of the security appliances on the Security Appliances page.

Requirements for HA

To enable HA, your network setup needs:

• Two Meter Security Appliances: A primary and a secondary (backup) appliance.
• Independent ISP Uplinks: Each Security Appliance requires its own connection to an Internet Service Provider (ISP). This ensures that the failure of one ISP link doesn't bring down both appliances.
• Network Connection: Both SAs connect to your core network switch, and directly to each other.

Here’s a typical connection diagram:

If you have any questions about the Security Appliance, HA or need further assistance, feel free to contact Meter Support at support@meter.com or submit a ticket on the Meter Dashboard.