standby management server no HA option

[decurion]

We have a standby environment in a different location in case of disaster. There is a firewall there and there is a firewall on our production environment.

We have one management server on the prod environment which manages both firewalls.
Should a disaster occur to the prod environment the management server wouldn't be available so I'd need a management server to manage the backup firewall.

I have a licence for another management server but how can I make sure all databases and config are the same?
can I just regularly copy over the tgz file created by a backup or export command and then restore or import? Since the other management server would have a different address can this work or is the only solution to this to get the High Availabilty licence?

Thanks

[chillyjim]

You can do upgrade_export/imports but if your management is Pro/Power then why not just use HA? If its express/UTM yeah you're stuck with the long form.

[decurion]

Its CheckPoint Express R60 on SecurePlatform.
My understandding is that to do HA we'd need to buy another licence (for HA). I'm trying to see if I can make this happen with what we currently have without having to buy additional licences.

[chillyjim]

In that case yes you would need to upgrade to SmartCenter Power (Management HA isn't available for express) so you will have to resort to a manual "sync". Using upgrade_ex/import is your best bet as it won't mess up the IP addresses on the "backup" manager