NSE7 Enterprise Firewall and VDOMs Practice Question
An administrator configures two FortiGate units in an active-passive HA cluster. During a failover test, the administrator notices that the secondary unit becomes primary but the session table is empty, causing all existing connections to drop. Which configuration change should be made to preserve session information during failover?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently confuse configuration synchronization (which is automatic and covers settings) with session synchronization (which must be explicitly enabled), leading them to incorrectly select option A thinking it preserves sessions.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Enable session pickup and configure HA session synchronization
Session pickup and HA session synchronization are specifically designed to replicate the session table from the primary FortiGate to the secondary unit in an active-passive cluster. Without this feature, the secondary unit becomes primary but has no knowledge of existing sessions, causing all active connections to drop. Enabling session synchronization ensures that session state information is continuously mirrored to the standby unit, allowing seamless failover without disrupting established flows.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Enable FGCP configuration synchronization
Why it's wrong here
FGCP synchronizes configuration, not session tables.
- ✗
Configure dead gateway detection on the FortiGate units
Why it's wrong here
Dead gateway detection is for routing gateway failover, not session preservation.
- ✗
Enable link-failover on the monitored interfaces
Why it's wrong here
Link-failover only triggers failover on interface failure.
- ✓
Enable session pickup and configure HA session synchronization
Why this is correct
Session pickup synchronizes session tables between cluster members.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This NSE7 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Fortinet certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the NSE7 exam.