---
title: LDAP directory failover
description: LDAP gateway in PingOne uses a failover mechanism across your configured directory servers.
component: pingone
page_id: pingone:integrations:p1_ldap_directory_failover
canonical_url: https://docs.pingidentity.com/pingone/integrations/p1_ldap_directory_failover.html
revdate: May 27, 2026
section_ids:
  how-the-gateway-manages-connections: How the gateway manages connections
  returning-to-the-primary-server: Returning to the primary server
  connections-to-multiple-servers: Connections to multiple servers
  health-metrics: Health metrics
---

# LDAP directory failover

LDAP *(tooltip: \<div class="paragraph">
\<p>An open, cross platform protocol used for interacting with directory services.\</p>
\</div>)* gateway uses an automatic routing and failover mechanism across your configured directory servers.

## How the gateway manages connections

* **Server order:** The gateway always tries to use your directory servers in the exact order you list them in the PingOne admin console. This order never changes unless you manually rearrange the list yourself.

* **Reusing open connections:** To optimize performance, the gateway keeps a pool of connections open to your servers. The gateway reuses healthy connections and periodically closes and reopens them to prevent stale connections.

* **Regular health checks:** To keep connections active, the gateway runs a background health check that performs lightweight read requests on idle connections. The gateway automatically replaces unhealthy connections so that fresh, working connections always remain ready.

If the primary LDAP server becomes unresponsive, the gateway immediately shifts traffic to the next healthy directory server in your configured list.

## Returning to the primary server

You don't need to manually intervene to switch back to your primary server after an outage. The gateway automatically restores traffic to your primary server using two methods:

* When recycling connections, the gateway connects to the primary server in the configured order.

* When the gateway runs out of open connections to reuse, it must establish a new connection. Because the gateway always tries your primary server first when opening a new connection, it automatically reconnects to it once it returns online.

## Connections to multiple servers

You might see open network connections from the gateway to more than one LDAP server at the same time. This happens because individual connections might fail over to different servers during an interruption. When recycling a connection, the gateway keeps these connections alive for their configured lifetime.

## Health metrics

To monitor gateway performance and track connection pool metrics, check the gateway's built-in health metrics.

You can find a complete list of health metrics and how to access them in [Health metrics](p1_ldap_gateway_endpoints.html#p1_gateway_metrics).