Quantum Spark 2500 series - HA Pair. Manager required?

[JaySon_2021]

We are installing/building a pair of Quantum Spark 2500 series firewalls in an HA configuration. Do we also require a Management Center (Smartconsole)? Or can we make one of them a Firewall/Manager?

Thanks

[Chris_Atkinson · Accepted solution]

Locally managed devices support HA if that is your preference.

Please see the admin guide section here:

https://sc1.checkpoint.com/documents/Appliances/Quantum_Spark_R82.00.X/AdminGuides_Locally_Managed/E...

[JaySon_2021]

Thanks for the info/link. One other question. The 2560 comes with a WAN and DMZ port. My implementation requires a more custom config. Am I free to use the 8, 1Gb ports for whatever I want? ie: WAN, LAN, HA, DMZ, Specific Vlan etc. They are simply ports that I can configure like I would any other normal Checkpoint firewall?

[the_rock · Accepted solution]

I dont believe you can. You can have them in HA as locally managed or have separate management server managing the cluster.

[the_rock]

I just confirmed today with our SE that you cannot sadly use one of the appliances as the management server. I sort of figured that was the case, but its always better to be 100% sure. These devices dont work same way as regular Gaia. For example, you can have regular appliance or open server set up as standalone (fw and mgmt in one), which can then be used to manage regular fws or even smb.