topic Re: ElasticXL: From single site Active/Active to dual site Active/Standby in Firewall and Security Management

ElasticXL: From single site Active/Active to dual site Active/Standby

Alex- — Sun, 17 May 2026 12:40:57 GMT

One of our customers is running a new ElasticXL in single-site, Active/Active.

For various reasons, they now want to have all traffic active in the room where the second unit is installed, and standby where the first one is installed.

My understanding is that it can be done rather seamlessly:

Set the first unit down and the second one up in the cluster and check all traffic works only on the second unit
Remove the first unit from the Elastic membership, it will factory default and come back in "Ready to Join" mode
Add it again as new site

So that would have site one with 1_02 and site two with 2_01, in standby.

Install policy, make checks and so on.

I don't really have the time to lab this up as it needs to happen fairly quickly, but I don't see anything in the admin guides preventing this approach.

Re: ElasticXL: From single site Active/Active to dual site Active/Standby

Martijn — Sun, 17 May 2026 15:35:08 GMT

Hi,

R82 Scalable Platform Guide describes the steps you mention so it seems you are on the right path?

But I would advice to open a pro-active case with TAC so you have an engineer available if you run into trouble.

Good luck and let us know how it went.

Martijn

Re: ElasticXL: From single site Active/Active to dual site Active/Standby

emmap — Mon, 18 May 2026 01:12:35 GMT

It should work but I would add another step to remove and re-add site 1 gateway once you know 2_01 is good so you have a 1_01 and 2_01. Primarily because I have a feeling you'll have longer term issues if you don't have a 1_01 gateway.

Re: ElasticXL: From single site Active/Active to dual site Active/Standby

Wolfgang — Mon, 18 May 2026 06:12:03 GMT

@Alex- I did this in the past, but like @emmap mentioned. Removed the second member 1_02 from the Cluster, wait for ready to join and then add them two the second site. After that we had 1_01 and 2_01. Everything was running witout any interruptions.

Re: ElasticXL: From single site Active/Active to dual site Active/Standby

Alex- — Mon, 18 May 2026 07:22:02 GMT

Makes perfect sense, as described by @emmap.

We will proceed as such and provide an update on how it went.