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10. Fortinet Getting Started v6.0. Escort



Greetings! Welcome to the tenth anniversary Fortinet Getting Started lesson . In the last lesson, we examined the basic mechanisms for logging and reporting, and also got acquainted with the FortiAnalyzer solution . To conclude the practical lessons of this course, I want to introduce you to various technologies that may come in handy when administering a FortiGate firewall . The necessary theory, as well as the practical part, is under the cut.

Suppose you forget your FortiGate account password and cannot log into your device. What to do in this case? The built-in account will help here, through which you can change the password for the administrator. The login information for this entry is shown in the figure below.



But in order to go under this entry, it is necessary to physically reboot the device, the reboot command from the command line will not help. Also, during login, you must be connected to the device through the console port. Since you can log into your account only about a minute after the reboot, I advise you to write the password in advance and copy it to the clipboard.

Now let's talk about updates. Is it always worth updating? Not really. My colleagues and I believe that updating is necessary in the following cases:

  1. ( 5.0 6.0) – , .
  2. ( 5.5 5.6) – FortiOS . , .
  3. , .

In other cases, it is not worth updating. Keep in mind that updating for the sake of updating is not the best practice. In this way, problems that previously did not exist could be generated.

If there is an understanding that an update is necessary, you can not immediately put it on production. Before this, it is necessary to test it on a test site. Also, in preparation for the update, you need to familiarize yourself with Release Notes - changes in the new version. This is due to the fact that some updates can significantly change certain functionality, because of which part of your settings may become unavailable. This document accompanies each update. They are usually found in the Fortinet documentation base .
After successful testing, it is necessary to backup the current configuration, as well as develop a backup plan for returning to the old configuration.

When upgrading, you also need to consider the Upgrade Path (sequence of upgrades). This is the only way to reduce risks when upgrading from version to version. If you act against the Upgrade Path, you can lose some of the configuration information during the upgrade.

And of course, do not forget about the current service contract, which will help you get qualified technical support in case of impossibility to resolve the problem on your own.

Updating the operating system, restoring the configuration using backup, as well as using administrator accounts, restricting administrator access, creating a secure connection for administration - all these points are discussed in the video tutorial:


In the next lesson, we will cover licensing issues for FortiGate and FortiAnalyzer devices. In order not to miss it, stay tuned for updates on the following channels:

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