Configuring system settings : Using high availability (HA) : Monitoring the HA status
Monitoring the HA status
The Status tab in the High Availability submenu shows the configured HA mode of operation of a FortiMail unit in an HA group. You can also manually initiate synchronization and reset the HA mode of operation. A reset may be required if a FortiMail unit’s effective HA mode of operation differs from its configured HA mode of operation, such as after a failover when a configured primary unit is currently acting as a secondary unit.
For FortiMail units operating as secondary units, the Status tab also lets you view the status and schedule of the HA synchronization daemon.
Appearance of the Status tab varies by:
• whether the HA group is active-passive or config-only
• whether the FortiMail unit is configured as a primary unit or secondary unit
• whether a failover has occurred (active-passive only)
If HA is disabled, this tab displays:
HA mode is currently disabled
Before you can use the Status tab, you must first enable and configure HA. For details, see “Configuring the HA mode and group”.
To access this part of the web UI, your administrator account’s:
• Domain must be System
• access profile must have Read or Read-Write permission to the Others category
For details, see “About administrator account permissions and domains”.
To view the HA mode of operation status, go System > High Availability > Status.
 
Table 30: Viewing HA status
GUI item
Description
Mode Status
 
 
Configured Operating Mode
Displays the HA operating mode that you configured, either:
• master: Configured to be the primary unit of an active-passive group.
• slave: Configured to be the secondary unit of an active-passive group.
• config master: Configured to be the primary unit of a config-only group.
• config slave: Configured to be a secondary unit of a config-only group.
For information on configuring the HA operating mode, see “Mode of operation”.
After a failure, the FortiMail unit may not be acting in its configured HA operating mode. For details, see “Effective Operating Mode”.
 
Effective Operating Mode
Displays the mode that the unit is currently operating in, either:
• master: Acting as primary unit.
• slave: Acting as secondary unit.
• off: For primary units, this indicates that service/interface monitoring has detected a failure and has taken the primary unit offline, triggering failover. For secondary units, this indicates that synchronization has failed once; a subsequent failure will trigger failover. For details, see “On failure” and “click HERE to restart the HA system”.
• failed: Service/network interface monitoring has detected a failure and the diagnostic connection is currently determining whether the problem has been corrected or failover is required. For details, see “On failure”.
The configured HA operating mode matches the effective operating mode unless a failure has occurred.
For example, after a failover, a FortiMail unit configured to operate as a secondary unit could be acting as a primary unit.
For explanations of combinations of configured and effective HA modes of operation, see “Monitoring the HA status”.
For information on restoring the FortiMail unit to an effective HA operating mode that matches the configured operating mode, see “click HERE to restore configured operating mode”.
This option appears only if the FortiMail unit is a member of an active-passive HA group.
Daemon Status
 
 
Monitor
Displays the time at which the secondary unit’s HA daemon will check to make sure that the primary unit is operating correctly, and, if monitoring has detected a failure, the number of times that a failure has occurred.
Monitoring occurs through the heartbeat link between the primary and secondary units. If the heartbeat link becomes disconnected, the next time the secondary unit checks for the primary unit, the primary unit will not respond. If the maximum number of consecutive failures is reached, and no secondary heartbeat or remote service monitoring heartbeat is available, the secondary unit will change its effective HA operating mode to become the new primary unit.
For details, see “HA base port”.
This option appears only for secondary units in active-passive HA groups.
 
Configuration
Displays the time at which the secondary unit’s HA daemon will synchronize the FortiMail configuration from the primary unit to the secondary unit.
The message slave unit is currently synchronizing appears when the HA daemon is synchronizing the configuration.
For information on items that are not synchronized, see “Configuration settings that are not synchronized”.
This option appears only for secondary units in active-passive HA groups.
 
Data
Displays the time at which the secondary unit HA daemon will synchronize mail data from the primary unit to the secondary unit.
The message slave unit is currently synchronizing appears when the HA daemon is synchronizing data.
For details, see “Backup mail data directories” and “Backup MTA queue directories”.
This option appears only for secondary units in active-passive HA groups.
click HERE to start a configuration/data sync
Click to manually initiate synchronization of the configuration and, for active-passive groups, mail data. For information on items that are not synchronized, see “Configuration settings that are not synchronized”.
click HERE to restore configured operating mode
 
Click to reset the FortiMail unit to an effective HA operating mode that matches the FortiMail unit’s configured operating mode.
For example, for a configured primary unit whose effective HA operating mode is now slave, after correcting the cause of the failover, you might click this option on the primary unit to restore the configured primary unit to active duty, and restore the secondary unit to its slave role.
This option appears only if the FortiMail unit is a member of an active-passive HA group.
Note: Before selecting this option, if the effective HA operating mode changed due to failover, you should resolve any issues that caused the failover.
click HERE to switch to slave mode
Click to manually switch the effective HA operating mode of the primary unit so that it becomes a secondary unit.
This option appears only if the FortiMail unit is currently operating as a primary unit.
click HERE to restart the HA system
Click to restart HA processes after they have been halted due to detection of a failure by service monitoring. For details, see “On failure”, “Configuring service-based failover”, and “Restarting the HA processes on a stopped primary unit”.
This option appears only if the FortiMail unit is configured to operate as the primary unit (master), but its effective HA operating mode is off.
 
 
Table 31: Combinations of configured and effective HA modes of operation
Configured operating mode
Effective operating mode
Description
master
master
Normal for the primary unit of an active-passive HA group.
slave
slave
Normal for the secondary unit of an active-passive HA group.
master
off
The primary unit has experienced a failure, or the FortiMail unit is in the process of switching to operating in HA mode.
HA processes and email processing are stopped.
slave
off
The secondary unit has detected a failure, or the FortiMail unit is in the process of switching to operating in HA mode.
After the secondary unit starts up and connects with the primary unit to form an HA group, the first configuration synchronization may fail in special circumstances. To prevent both the secondary and primary units from simultaneously acting as primary units, the effective HA mode of operation becomes off.
If subsequent synchronization fails, the secondary unit’s effective HA mode of operation becomes master.
master
failed
The remote service monitoring or local network interface monitoring on the primary unit has detected a failure, and will attempt to connect to the other FortiMail unit. If the problem that caused the failure has been corrected, the effective HA mode of operation switches from failed to slave, or to match the configured HA mode of operation, depending on the On failure setting.
Additionally, f the HA group is operating in transparent mode, and if the effective HA mode of operation changes to failed, the network interface IP/netmask on the secondary unit displays bridging (waiting for recovery). For details, see “Configuring the network interfaces”.
master
slave
The primary unit has experienced a failure but then returned to operation. When the failure occurred, the unit configured to be the secondary unit became the primary unit. When the unit configured to be the primary unit restarted, it detected the new primary unit and so switched to operating as the secondary unit.
slave
master
The secondary unit has detected that the FortiMail unit configured to be the primary unit failed. When the failure occurred, the unit configured to be the secondary unit became the primary unit.
config master
N/A
Normal for the primary unit of a config-only HA group.
config slave
N/A
Normal for the secondary unit of a config-only HA group.