The hello state hold-down time is the number of seconds that a cluster unit waits before changing from hello state to work state. After a failure or when starting up, cluster units operate in the hello state to send and receive heartbeat packets so that all the cluster units can find each other and form a cluster. A cluster unit should change from the hello state to work state after it finds all of the other FortiGate units to form a cluster with. If for some reason all cluster units cannot find each other during the hello state then some cluster units may be joining the cluster after it has formed. This can cause disruptions to the cluster and affect how it operates.

One reason for a delay in all of the cluster units joining the cluster could be the cluster units are located at different sites of if for some other reason communication is delayed between the heartbeat interfaces.

If cluster units are joining your cluster after it has started up of if it takes a while for units to join the cluster you can increase the time that the cluster units wait in the helo state. The hello state hold-down time range is 5 to 300 seconds. The hello state hold-down time default is 20 seconds.

Use the following CLI command to increase the time to wait in the helo state to 1 minute (60 seconds):