# Redundancy failover

**URL:** <https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/redundancy-failover/68533>\
**Category:** Ignition\
**Created:** [January 12, 2023, 8:42am UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/redundancy-failover/68533 "2023-01-12T08:42:28Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 16\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Deville\_Xavier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/df705f/32.png) [@Deville\_Xavier](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/Deville_Xavier)\
**Post date:** [January 12, 2023, 8:42am UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/redundancy-failover/68533/1 "2023-01-12T08:42:28Z")

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Hi everyone,

What are the conditions for a redundant pair of gateways to automatically failover ?  
Is there a full list of these conditions in the documentation?

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**Author:** ![justinedwards.jle](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/justinedwards.jle/32/37854_2.png) [@justinedwards.jle](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/justinedwards.jle)\
**Post date:** [January 12, 2023, 9:02am UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/redundancy-failover/68533/2 "2023-01-12T09:02:46Z")

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I believe this is what you are looking for:  
[Ignition Docs: Setting up Redundancy](https://docs.inductiveautomation.com/display/DOC81/Setting+Up+Redundancy)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Deville\_Xavier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/df705f/32.png) [@Deville\_Xavier](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/Deville_Xavier)\
**Post date:** [January 12, 2023, 9:56am UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/redundancy-failover/68533/3 "2023-01-12T09:56:23Z")

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From the documentation I undestrand that the backup assumes responsibility only if a failover timeout occurs :

 ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/original/3X/e/a/ea934100649cb2ff3dbdb6f497277f914f29891c.png)

Are there any other cases?

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**Author:** ![pturmel](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/pturmel/32/3295_2.png) [@pturmel](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/pturmel)\
**Post date:** [January 12, 2023, 1:17pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/redundancy-failover/68533/4 "2023-01-12T13:17:51Z")

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Manually triggered failover.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Deville\_Xavier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/df705f/32.png) [@Deville\_Xavier](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/Deville_Xavier)\
**Post date:** [January 12, 2023, 1:58pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/redundancy-failover/68533/5 "2023-01-12T13:58:13Z")

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So beside the loss of network connection between the gateways, there is no other case where the failover is automaticcaly triggered ?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![pturmel](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/pturmel/32/3295_2.png) [@pturmel](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/pturmel)\
**Post date:** [January 12, 2023, 2:03pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/redundancy-failover/68533/6 "2023-01-12T14:03:20Z")

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No. But keep in mind that the network check is traffic between the gateways over their connection. A gateway crash or freeze on either side would break the "connection". It isn't just a simple ping.

What are you hoping the answer is?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Deville\_Xavier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/df705f/32.png) [@Deville\_Xavier](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/Deville_Xavier)\
**Post date:** [January 12, 2023, 3:56pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/redundancy-failover/68533/7 "2023-01-12T15:56:27Z")

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I thought it might exist an automatic monitoring of certain key parameters of the active gateway such as for instance CPU and RAM used by the active gateway. If these values raise a certain limit for a certain time then a failover could occur.  
But if the failover only occurs after a network loss between the gateway (no matter the cause of the loss), the answer if fine, I just needed a confirmation.

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**Author:** ![paul-griffith](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/paul-griffith/32/37249_2.png) [@paul-griffith](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/paul-griffith)\
**Post date:** [January 12, 2023, 6:27pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/redundancy-failover/68533/8 "2023-01-12T18:27:31Z")

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Redundancy failover is not intended to be a load-balancing mechanism. It's all-or-nothing. If one server is overprovisioned, failover will just send all that load to the backup.

True load balancing is possible in Ignition, but the exact approach will depend on what you're trying to load balance - e.g. Vision is different from Perspective is different from tag execution load.

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**Author:** ![wfiller](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/2bfe46/32.png) [@wfiller](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/wfiller)\
**Post date:** [January 16, 2026, 5:17pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/redundancy-failover/68533/9 "2026-01-16T17:17:53Z")

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We have a gateway that has been briefly failing over twice a day. Looking at the redundancy settings, I noticed the Ping Timeout is 300 and the Ping Max Missed is 10. These are probably the default settings, I didn’t notice that in the manual. This is only a 3 second window. Is it reasonable to increase these to a 30 second window. I know it’s not the root cause but it might help us isolate the problem and ride out whatever glitch is causing it. It always restores almost immediately. We recently upgraded to 8.3 but this was also happening with 8.1.36. We have a lot of tags ~ .5 million and mqtt etc. It looks like our memory is sufficient. Just looking for ideas.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![pturmel](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/pturmel/32/3295_2.png) [@pturmel](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/pturmel)\
**Post date:** [January 16, 2026, 5:27pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/redundancy-failover/68533/10 "2026-01-16T17:27:46Z")

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The ping timeout setting is **milliseconds** , so 3/10 of a second. (The default.)

Having repeated 300ms ping delays suggests a few possibilities:

- Overloaded system at the OS level slowing replies from the partner,
- Overloaded system at the java level slowing _processing_ of replies (java GC stalls, perhaps),
- Overloaded or overcommitted hypervisor(s) starving one or the other redundant gateway,
- Flaky network link dropping packets (perhaps poor Rapid Spanning Tree config, or plain Spanning Tree instead of RSTP),
- Flaky VPN for a backup gateway that isn't located in the same facility as the master (don't do this!).

(With a really big system, I'd suspect GC stalls first.)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![wfiller](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/2bfe46/32.png) [@wfiller](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/wfiller)\
**Post date:** [January 16, 2026, 5:46pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/redundancy-failover/68533/11 "2026-01-16T17:46:41Z")

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Maybe I buried the lead but I was really asking if it is reasonable to increase the ping timeout temporarily to help us troubleshoot. Correct me if I’m wrong but I was under the impression that if an event pauses the primary gateway for more than 3,000 milliseconds, it will trigger a failover. I was wondering if it would be reasonable to increase these temporarily to help find the root cause, since the failover itself causes all kinds of issues with MQTT etc.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![pturmel](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/pturmel/32/3295_2.png) [@pturmel](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/pturmel)\
**Post date:** [January 16, 2026, 6:16pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/redundancy-failover/68533/12 "2026-01-16T18:16:13Z")

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> [@wfiller](#):
>
> increase these temporarily to help find the root cause,

I'm struggling to imagine how this would **help** find the problem.

That it mitigates the pain is indisputable, but I would venture that the pain may be _necessary_ to pinpoint the problem.

I certainly would not increase the ping timeout until **after** checking off the list I posted.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![wfiller](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/2bfe46/32.png) [@wfiller](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/wfiller)\
**Post date:** [January 16, 2026, 8:37pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/redundancy-failover/68533/13 "2026-01-16T20:37:21Z")

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Thanks. From other posts here we will probably start with adding this to ignition.conf  
wrapper.java.additional.XX=-XX:MaxGCPauseMillis=200

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Kevin.Herron](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/kevin.herron/32/7259_2.png) [@Kevin.Herron](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/Kevin.Herron)\
**Post date:** [January 16, 2026, 8:40pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/redundancy-failover/68533/14 "2026-01-16T20:40:05Z")

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Why?

Also, 200 is the default value for that setting.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![wfiller](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/2bfe46/32.png) [@wfiller](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/wfiller)\
**Post date:** [January 16, 2026, 8:42pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/redundancy-failover/68533/15 "2026-01-16T20:42:57Z")

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Yeah good point, we found that from your post. Honestly, because I had two LLM’s analyze the system\_logs.idb and that was one of the recommendations, but we haven’t changed anything yet.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![pturmel](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/pturmel/32/3295_2.png) [@pturmel](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/pturmel)\
**Post date:** [January 16, 2026, 8:43pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/redundancy-failover/68533/16 "2026-01-16T20:43:09Z")

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This is probably more quickly useful, so you can **see** your stalls, if any:

```python
wrapper.java.additional.9=-Xlog:gc:file=logs/gc.log:t,tags:filecount=5,filesize=4M

```

(MaxGCPauseMillis is a soft target, not a hard limit.)
