There are two 10Gbps dual-port NIC installed on a 6800 appliance. Which interfaces should be connected to Orchestrator 1 for downlinks' intra-orchestrator redundancy when using two Orchestrators?

To achieve intra-orchestrator redundancy for a Security Group Appliance, connections must be resilient to a single component failure, such as a Network Interface Card (NIC). With two dual-port NICs installed (e.g., in Slot 1 and Slot 2), the best practice is to connect one port from the first NIC and one port from the second NIC to the same orchestrator. Connecting Port 1 in Slot 1 and Port 1 in Slot 2 ensures that if the entire NIC in either slot fails, the appliance remains connected to the orchestrator through the other NIC.

A. Connecting to "any pair" could result in selecting two ports from the same physical NIC, which offers no redundancy against a NIC failure.
C. Connecting both Port 1 and Port 2 from Slot 1 uses the same physical NIC, creating a single point of failure.
D. While this configuration also provides NIC redundancy, option B represents the most standard and systematic approach (port 1 of each card).

1. Check Point. (2023). Maestro R81.20 Administration Guide. Chapter 2: "Maestro Deployment", Section: "Connecting Security Appliances to the Orchestrators". The guide states, "For appliance's NIC redundancy, connect the two cables to ports on different NICs on the appliance." The accompanying diagrams illustrate this principle by connecting ports from different physical cards.