I
had exactly the same problems with my Pro-VX. Sonicwall ended up sending
me a new Pro-300 to replace it. Then the Pro-300 started having similar
issues. Yesterday they gave me a new firmware to address some of the
issues (6.3.1.2), but since I only upgraded it this morning again I have yet
to see if it works long term.
My only fix with the
Pro-300 going crazy was to revert back to 6.2.0.0. But with so many
users running XP and using VPN, it wasn't a solution because only 6.3.1.0
supported the new version 8 VPN client that you need if you run XP. I'm
crossing my fingers, but meanwhile have ordered a new Watchguard 2500 to
replace the sonicwall - it's just been too unstable to trust for my business
anymore.
Some things with the
Pro-VX that have helped me, and some others - don't leave the ports on the
firewall set to autodetect. Hard code them for your switches'
speed. Mine are all 100MB half duplex. That seemed to help mine
some, and a few others. Also, I'd avoid the 6.3.1.0 firmware and stay at
the 6.2.0.0 until they officially release a successor to
6.3.1.0.
Good
luck!
John
-----Original
Message-----
From: Colin
Irwin [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Thursday, September 19, 2002 10:36
AM
To:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject:
[SonicWALL]- Intro & question
Hi there,
I'm the Managing Director of a web
solutions and hosting company in the UK.
We have 2 x Sonicwall Pro VX.
Until recently we had only one running on the 6.2.0.0 firmware - the other was
boxed up as we had not yet got round to setting up High
Availability.
A few weeks ago we upgraded to the
latest firmware and have been having nightmares ever since. The Pro VX kept
restarting itself or locking completely. Looking around Usenet we saw no
messages that suggested this was a common problem with the new firmware and so
we decided our first option would be to set up the 2 Pro VXs as a High
Availability pair to offer better resiliency.
The results of this were mixed.
The HA pair worked fine, with the Secondary kicking in after 10s and
relinquishing control back to the Primary when it came back online. However,
one of our server stacks on the DMZ became invisible on the net when the
secondary firewall was active. I believe this is because the IP/MAC addresses
associated with the firewall were stuck in caches in switches, hubs and NICs
and the servers were looking for IP/MAC1 and seeing IP/MAC2
(IYSWIM).
At present we have rolled back to
the 6.2.0.0 firmware on a single firewall and (touch wood) things are stable
again. Before we set up HA again I would like input as to whether my diagnosis
of the problem is correct and what we should be doing to ensure the failover
process works smoothly in future.
The servers are 2 pairs of load
balancing Win2k Servers that all go through the same hub and then on to
another hub on the way to the DMZ port of the Pro VX.
Cheers,
Colin
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