HIGH AVAILABILITY FOR A SHARED-MEMORY-BASED FIREWALL SERVICE VIRTUAL MACHINE

A method for a shared-memory-based SVM to provide high availability of service is disclosed. In an embodiment, an agent process of the SVM receives a signal that one or more data packets have been queued in a shared memory device of one or more shared memory devices. Upon receiving the signal, the agent process determines whether the SVM has been designated as active for the shared memory device, and if it has, the agent process reads the one or more data packets from the shared memory device. As the data packets are read from the shared memory device: for each data packet, of the one or more data packets read from the shared memory device: the agent process determines whether an indication that the packet is to be transmitted to its destination is received, and if the indication is received, the packet is placed back to the shared memory device.