Question 527 - 156-315.81 discussion

ClusterXL and VRRP are the two cluster solutions that are available under R81.20.According to the ClusterXL R81.20 Administration Guide1, ClusterXL is a Check Point software-based clustering solution that provides high availability and load sharing for Check Point Security Gateways and Cluster Members. ClusterXL supports two modes: High Availability and Load Sharing. In High Availability mode, all Cluster Members are connected to the same network segment and share a virtual IP address. One member is active and handles all traffic, while the others are in standby mode and ready to take over in case of a failure. In Load Sharing mode, all Cluster Members are active and share the traffic load according to a predefined algorithm.ClusterXL supports both unicast and multicast modes for Load Sharing1.

VRRP (Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol) is an industry standard protocol that provides high availability for routers or firewalls by creating a virtual router with a virtual IP address that is shared by a group of routers or firewalls. One router or firewall is elected as the master and handles all traffic directed to the virtual IP address, while the others are backups that monitor the master and take over if it fails.VRRP can be used with Check Point Security Gateways to provide redundancy and failover for external interfaces1.

NSRP (NetScreen Redundancy Protocol) is a proprietary protocol developed by Juniper Networks that provides high availability and load balancing for NetScreen firewalls.NSRP is not supported by Check Point products2.

HSRP (Hot Standby Router Protocol) is a Cisco proprietary protocol that provides high availability for routers by creating a virtual router with a virtual IP address that is shared by a group of routers. One router is elected as the active router and handles all traffic directed to the virtual IP address, while another router is elected as the standby router and monitors the active router and takes over if it fails. HSRP is not supported by Check Point products.

IP Clustering is a feature of Linux Virtual Server (LVS) that provides high availability and load balancing for IP-based services by creating a cluster of real servers that are accessed through a virtual IP address. The cluster is managed by a director that routes requests to the real servers according to a scheduling algorithm. IP Clustering is not supported by Check Point products.