bringing new appliances into a cluster

[Daniel_Kavan]

Hi mates,

We have a cluster of 6900s and we are bringing in 9300s to replace them.   My understanding is to just add the 9300s into the existing cluster, fail over then remove/delete the older 6900s.    Does everyone agree that's the best approach?    Instead of sync cable, I'm planning on either using a run of the mill hub or a few switch ports.  I assume its ok to have a mix of 6900s and 9300s for a small amout of time the active node may be a 6900 and the standby running on a 9300.

[the_rock]

I always follow below process for that and never an issue.

Andy

https://community.checkpoint.com/t5/Security-Gateways/Replace-Upgrade-Cluster/m-p/157228#M27268

[Daniel_Kavan]

Yes, that's one way. 

I kind of like bringing in a 3rd cluster member better, just so the working HA is still there.

[the_rock]

I believe same process would apply, except you are simply adding another member.

Andy

[Daniel_Kavan]

Yeah, except for using a sync cable you'd need a standard hub or switch ports.

[the_rock]

Ah, yes, thats true.

Andy

[Bob_Zimmerman]

Last I checked, Check Point does not support clusters with different member hardware for any length of time, no matter how small. The official answer is you MUST take an outage to swap.

That said, this is one of the combinations which could actually work, since the 6900 uses an i9-9900KF (8c16t) and the 9300 uses an i5-13400E (10c16t), so the OS sees 16 cores on both. Both run 14 workers by default. The big concern is the 9300 wants to have UPPAK enabled, while the 6900 does not. I'm not 100% sure that configuration can successfully sync.