In an HA configuration, should the SNIP addresses of the primary and secondary devices be the same or different?

• A. They must have the same SNIP address
• B. They must have different SNIP addresses
• C. SNIP is not used in HA
• D. SNIP addresses must be on different VLANs

Answer: (B)

In high availability, each device needs its own identity in the network for outbound traffic to backend servers. The SNIP is the source IP the appliance uses when it talks to those servers, so giving the primary and secondary the same SNIP would create an IP conflict on the network and cause routing and reply-traffic problems, especially when failover happens. Therefore, the SNIPs on the two devices must be different. (SNIPs are used for server-side traffic, while the VIP handles client-facing traffic; they typically reside on the same backend subnet, not on separate VLANs.)