PCNSE Practice Question: Managing Troubleshooting and High Availability
What is the recommended best practice for the HA2 keepalive timer in an active/passive HA configuration?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often confuse the HA2 keepalive timer with the HA1 backup link timer or assume a lower value always improves performance, ignoring the risk of false failovers due to network jitter.
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
✓
1000 ms
In an active/passive HA configuration, the HA2 keepalive timer should be set to 1000 ms (1 second) as a best practice. This value provides a balance between fast failover detection and network stability, ensuring that the passive firewall can detect a failure of the active firewall within a reasonable timeframe without causing false positives due to transient network issues.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
2000 ms
Why it's wrong here
Too slow, failover may be delayed.
- ✗
It should be left at the default value and not changed
Why it's wrong here
While default is recommended, this option implies no change, but the question asks for the value.
- ✗
500 ms
Why it's wrong here
Too aggressive, may cause false positives.
- ✓
1000 ms
Why this is correct
Default and recommended for stability.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This PCNSE practice question is part of Courseiva's free Palo Alto Networks 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 PCNSE exam.