John is using Management HA.

The SmartCenter that should be connected to for making changes is the active SmartCenter. The active SmartCenter is the one that is currently synchronizing its configuration with the secondary SmartCenter and handling the communication with the gateways . The primary SmartCenter is the one that was initially configured as the main server, but it may become inactive if a failover occurs. The virtual IP of SmartCenter HA is used to access the SmartConsole, not to make changes. References: [Security Management Server High Availability (HA) R81 Administration Guide], [Check Point CCSA - R81: Practice Test & Explanation], [How to configure ClusterXL High Availability on Security Management Server]