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HA Devices

Infrastructure is typically designed with redundancy in mind, prompting vendors to develop various technologies to support different high availability (HA) strategies. These include a range of protocols, connection types, synchronization systems, and terminology.

This creates a complex ecosystem that can be challenging to navigate, especially when determining how to model redundant infrastructure in Nautobot or which model to select. This guide aims to provide a clear and comprehensive approach to documenting HA device infrastructure by covering:

  • Use Cases
  • Vendor Implementations
  • Data Model Overview
  • GraphQL Queries
  • Key questions for the data model
  • Configuration stanzas
  • API Calls using pynautobot snippets
  • Design Builder snippets

Use Cases

The primary use cases to consider when creating, updating, or documenting HA model protocols are:

  • Inventory Management: Tracking assets and device details.
  • Configuration Management: Generating and managing device configurations.
  • HA Resiliency: Understanding and documenting network fault tolerance.

To help guide these use cases, these questions will be answered each the respective virtual chassis and device redundancy groups docs:

  • Can you create a link aggregation group (LAG) across multiple devices?
  • Can you see all interfaces on the Primary?
  • Can you see all interfaces on the Backup?
  • On a Primary object, can you tell which interfaces are assigned to which device?
  • When do you see all the interfaces on the primary device?
  • Can you connect interfaces from primary to non-primary?
  • What should the naming standard be for the chassis device?
  • Should I name the interfaces via interface device component templates?

Vendor Implementations

While vendors offer a variety of technologies, the data model remains largely agnostic to these specifics. The following table walks through those various vendor technologies that were considered in the data modeling best practices.

Dual-chassis Single Control Plane Multi-chassis Stack Firewall Cluster Multi-chassis L2 Pair Firewall HA Pair HA Pairs
Example Technologies VSS
StackWise Virtual		 StackWise
VC
Arista Stack
IRF
SummitStack		 Cisco FTD
SRX		 vPC
MLAG
MC-LAG		 PAN
Fortinet
ASA		 LB
F5
A10
Viptela
Versa
Silver Peak
Management Control Plane Count 1* 1 1 2 2 2
Physical Device Count 2 2+ 2+ 2+ 2 2
Prompt Identity
(CLI Hostname)		 Shared
(single logical hostname)		 Shared
(single logical hostname)		 Shared
(single logical hostname)		 Per-device Per-device
(may show active or similar)		 Per-device
(may show active or similar)
Sibling Awareness members members members peer relationship node0/node1 peer/HA partner
Configuration Scope Full
(single running config for logical switch)		 Full Full Partial Majority Majority
Configuration Sync
(full / majority / independent)		 Full Full Full Independent Majority
(minor local config)		 Majority
(minor local config)
Redundancy Group Identifier Domain/Pair ID Stack/Chassis ID Cluster ID Domain/Pair ID
(vPC domain ID / MLAG domain)		 Cluster ID HA/Cluster ID
Redundancy Mode Active/Active Active/Active Active/Active or Active/Standby Active/Active Active/Standby or Active/Active Active/Standby or Active/Active
Dedicated HA Interface Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Typically
(sync/heartbeat links)
Shared Virtual MAC Yes Yes Yes Typically
(via protocol such as FHRP/anycast)		 Yes (on L3) Yes

Which Nautobot Model to Use

The primary piece of information to consider from this list is the Management Control Plane Count.

  • When it is one you should use a VirtualChassis.
  • When it is two, you should use a Device Redundancy Group.

The rest of the documentation for the below components can be found in each data model page.

  • Data Model Overview
  • GraphQL Queries
  • Key questions for the data model
  • Configuration stanzas
  • API Calls using pynautobot snippets
  • Design Builder snippets

Quick Navigation

  • Virtual Chassis

    • Arista Stack
    • Cisco VSS
    • Cisco Stackwise
    • Cisco Stackwise Virtual
    • Cisco FTD
    • HPE Intelligent Resilient Framework (IRF)
    • Juniper SRX (Chassis Cluster)
    • Extreme Networks SummitStack

  • Device Redundancy Group

    • A10 Thunder
    • Arista MLAG
    • Aruba Silver Peak
    • Cisco ASA
    • Cisco vPC
    • Cisco Viptela | Catalyst SD-WAN Manager
    • F5 BIG-IP
    • Juniper MC-LAG
    • Versa Secure SD-WAN