How to setup HA with 2 SonicWALL NSA-E5500's?

Question

My company has a SonicWALL NSA-E5500 that's serving the entire company. We have an extra one (same model) that's not being used, and we want to set it up as a backup to the primary using HA. How is this done?

Answer 1

Looking at my documentation for SonicOS 5.9, you need to have both units registered with your MySonicwall account. You register one as a Primary HA unit and the other as secondary. According to my docs you only need licenses for one of the units, they'll be copied to the secondary. At this point you should also be able to down load admin guide yourself as well, read it for details. After you've registered the devices, login to them navigate to System>licenses, and click synchronize.



Next, on the primary unit Navigate to High Availability>Setting. Click on the HA Devices tab, enter in the serial number of the secondary unit. Click Apply and it should try to synchronize the configurations. There might be some interface configuration required, just read through the admin guide's chapter on High Availability

Answer 2

not sure why you would install 2 routers onto the same network and expect one to be a back up to the primary.



if you leave DHCP on both of them you will either end up with a double NAT (if connecting them one behind the other) or will have an issue with devices not knowing what DHCP server to get their local IP from if you connect them side by side with separate public IP addresses.



you should be able to set up failover for the WAN ports, so that you can connect multiple internet connections to the device in the event that one internet goes down the other one will pass thru all of the traffic. I would recommend different technologies for the multiple internet connections - and possibly even different providers, such as FiOS or a T1 as WAN1 and cable for WAN2 in the unlikely event that there is a carrier wide outtage by one of the providers.



as for wanting to install a second one - there is really no reason as the only reason you would need a back up to the sonicwall would be a hardware failure of the unit. if you are connected to a good surge protector/UPS then you should not be concerned too much with hardware failure of the sonicwall...



if you really felt you needed to, I would probably connect both sonicwalls to your switch set up exactly the same, but both connected to separate power supplies that can be remotely turned on and off. and leave the power to your back up unit turned off. in the event of a failure you could remotely turn off the power to the main unit and turn on the power for the back up unit - you may require releasing/renewing the IP addresses of your DHCP clients, (fastest way would just be to power cycle the switches) but shouldn't need to if the settings are the same for the secondary.



i am not a programmer but i am sure that a script could be created to continuously ping your network, and if it does not get a reply within a specified amount of time to power off the primary router and then power on the secondary.

Answer 3

The Pentium dual core E5500 is the better chip.