High Availability (HA) is a feature that allows the network administrator to another router to the network for hardware redundancy. In Hot-Standby Mode, The primary and secondary router share the same WAN source; however, usually, only the primary is online. When the primary router goes down, the secondary comes up, dial up the same WAN line, and continue to provide Internet service to LAN clients.
For DrayOS models, the two Vigor Router working in HA hot-standby mode can share the same WCF license key, and the configuration made on the primary will automatically sync to the secondary one. This article is going to demonstrate how to set up two routers in HA Hot-Standby Mode and create a group on MyVigor to share the WCF license key.
Note: The firmware and country code of both routers must be the same.
1. On the primary router, go to Application >> High Availability,
2. Go to Config Sync tab, check Enable Config Sync to update the configuration to the secondary router periodically. Every time the router finish Config Sync, the router will reboot, so I suggest that set the Config Sync Interval to 1 Day.
3. LAN IP Configuration at LAN >> General Setup,
4. Go to Application >> High Availability, and have a similar HA configuration except for Priority ID. Priority ID should be lower than the primary router.
5. Go to LAN >> General Setup for LAN IP Configuration. Mind that the IP should be different from (better larger) than that of the primary router.
If you have more than one LAN, every LAN should have a different IP Configuration on primary and secondary routers to avoid IP conflict.
Subnet | Primary Router | Secondary Router | Virtual IP | |
LAN1 | 192.168.1.0 | 192.168.1.2 | 192.168.1.3 | 192.168.1.1 |
LAN2 | 192.168.2.0 | 192.168.2.2 | 192.168.2.3 | 192.168.2.1 |
LAN3 | 192.168.3.0 | 192.168.3.2 | 192.168.3.3 | 192.168.3.1 |
. . . |
. . . |
. . . |
. . . |
. . . |
LANx | 192.168.x.0 | 192.168.x.2 | 192.168.x.3 | 192.168.x.1 |
6. After all the functions are set up correctly, we link up the management interface LAN so both routers can start communicating with each other, deciding which one should be the primary and syncing the configuration.
NOTE: Be sure to link the routers on a port that is a port member of the management LAN subnet. The VLAN of the management LAN can be port-based and tag-based. You can confirm this from LAN >> VLAN. In this
example, we can use port 5.
7. Now the routers are set, if you have MyVigor licenses, please create a group on MyVigor so these routers can share the same license. First, log in to myvigor.draytek.com, find High Availability Settings and click Add New Group.
8. Give a Group Name, select the same HA Group ID as router's HA settings, and select the member routers in the HA Device drop-down menu.
Note: Only the devices registered under this MyVigor account will be listed. The HA peers should be registered to the same account.
As Myvigor registration requires Internet access, please disable HA so that both routers can access Myvigor and sync the HA group. We may reboot routers after HA group is set, then enable HA.
9. Save the profile, and we can see the group entry.
Note: With this High Availability Group configured, if a high availability failover occurs, the backup routers will be able to use the licenses available on the primary router.
10. We may check the High Availability status by visiting the Status page. For the first time the two routers link up, we can see they are syncing the configuration from the primary to the secondary (showing
"Progressing" on the secondary router).
TIPS: Click "Renew" to update the information of remote router, click "Refresh" to update the information of local router.
11. When the routers have the same configuration, it will show the "Equal" at Config Sync Status.
TIPS: Router will check if there's any un-synced modification when it reaches the time interval we set in step 2. We may force to sync by clicking the "Sync" button. The secondary router will reboot after the config sync.
12. We may also check the Details page.
Before configuring High Availability, we need to set up LAN profiles and the VLAN ID configurations on each router by the following rules:
1. The LAN profile name and VLAN ID of the corresponding LAN between different routers must be the SAME.
2. Routers MUST own the DIFFERENT IP addresses on the HA Management LAN.
3. Router MUST own the SAME IP address on the non-HA Management LAN.
In this scenario, we use LAN1 as the HA Management LAN, so the IP addresses of each router on LAN1 should be different. And the IP addresses on other non-HA Management LAN should be the same. So, the IP addresses settings will be:
- Vigor3900_Master: LAN1 (HA-LAN) - 192.168.10.1, LAN2 - 192.168.20.254
- Vigor3900_Slave: LAN1 (HA-LAN) - 192.168.10.2, LAN2 - 192.168.20.254
1. Go to Applications >> High Availability >> Hot-Standby Profile Setup,
2. Go to Applications >> High Availability >> High Availability Global Setup:
3. Go to LAN >> General Setup >> lan1 profile (the HA-LAN profile) to change the IP Address first, the LAN IP should be different from the master router.
NOTE: Only set the Master and Slave routers to different IP addresses on the management interface, the IP addresses of the rest of the LANs should be the same on both routers. Here is the example, which takes LAN1 as management interface:
Subnet | Master Router | Slave Router | |
LAN1 Management Interface |
192.168.1.0 | 192.168.1.1 | 192.168.1.2 |
LAN2 | 192.168.2.0 | 192.168.2.254 | 192.168.2.254 |
LAN3 | 192.168.3.0 | 192.168.3.254 | 192.168.3.254 |
. . . |
. . . |
. . . |
. . . |
LANx |
192.168.x.0 |
192.168.x.254 |
192.168.x.254 |
4. Go to Applications >> High Availability >> Hot-Standby Profile Setup, and
5. Go to Applications >> High Availability >> High Availability Global Setup,
6. After completing the configurations above, we can connect the LAN of both router, then configuration synchronization will start. The Slave router will backup and restore the whole Master configurations except for the LAN IP, HA configurations, Administrator Password, and Router Name. Please do not connect the WAN on the Slave router at this moment.
7. After config synchronized, Slave router will restart. We can check HA Status from Applications >> High Availability >> HA Status.
By clicking Detail, we can see more device information.
8. When Master meets WAN or LAN Fail Event, or be powered off, the router with Priority ID 2 will become the new Master.
9. When upgrading the firmware of the Master router, the Slave router will upgrade to the same firmware version automatically. The process is:
Published On: 2017-10-24
Was this helpful?
Sorry about that. Contact Support if you need further assistance, or leave us some comments below to help us improve.