7 Configuring Traffic Management344 Voyager Reference GuideClustering DescriptionIPSO 3.6 and later lets you create firewall/VPN clusters that provide faulttolerance and dynamic load balancing. A cluster is made up of multipleappliances (nodes) that share common IP addresses, and it appears as a singlesystem to the networks connected to it.A cluster continues to function if a node fails or is taken out of service formaintenance purposes. The connections being handled by the failed node aretransferred to one of the remaining nodes.IPSO clusters are also scalable with regard to VPN performance—as you addnodes to a cluster, the VPN throughput improves.IPSO clusters support a variety of Check Point VPN-1/FireWall-1 NGfeatures, including:! Synchronizing state information between firewalls! Firewall flows! Network address translation! VPN encryptionNoteAll cluster nodes must run the same version of VPN-1/FireWall-1.Example ClusterThe following diagram shows a cluster with two nodes, firewall A andfirewall B. The cluster balances inbound and outbound network trafficbetween the nodes. If an internal or external interface on one of the nodesfails, or if a node itself fails, the existing connections handled by the failed
