Book Image

Getting Started with FortiGate

Book Image

Getting Started with FortiGate

Overview of this book

FortiGate from Fortinet is a highly successful family of appliances enabled to manage routing and security on different layers, supporting dynamic protocols, IPSEC and VPN with SSL, application and user control, web contents and mail scanning, endpoint checks, and more, all in a single platform. The heart of the appliance is the FortiOS (FortiOS 5 is the latest release) which is able to unify a friendly web interface with a powerful command line to deliver high performance. FortiGate is able to give users the results they usually achieve at a fraction of the cost of what they would have to invest with other vendors.This practical, hands-on guide addresses all the tasks required to configure and manage a FortiGate unit in a logical order. The book starts with topics related to VLAN and routing (static and advanced) and then discusses in full the UTM features integrated in the appliance. The text explains SSL VPN and IPSEC VPN with all the required steps you need to deploy the aforementioned solutions. High availability and troubleshooting techniques are also explained in the last two chapters of the book.This concise, example-oriented book explores all the concepts you need to administer a FortiGate unit. You will begin by covering the basic tools required to administer a FortiGate unit, including NAT, routing, and VLANs. You will then be guided through the concepts of firewalling, UTM inside the appliance, tunnelling using SSL, and IPSEC and dial-up configurations. Next, you will get acquainted with important topics like high availability and Vdoms. Finally, you will end the book with an overview of troubleshooting tools and techniques.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)

Introducing virtual domains


Virtual Domains (VDOMs) enable the division of a single FortiGate unit into multiple virtual devices. Each VDOM supports separate settings related to routing, firewalling, and VPN connections. Also if we have decided not to use VDOMs, a virtual domain will always exist: the root VDOM, which is the one we use forthe normal management of a FortiGate unit. As soon as we adopt VDOMs, the entire existing configuration will be kept inside the root VDOM. To enable VDOMs we have to use the Virtual Domain options, shown in the following screenshot, by navigating to the System | Dashboard | Status menu:

On selecting Enable we will be forced to login again to the FortiGate unit. As soon as we open the web-based manager, we will see some changes. The first one is that the left pane is no longer called System but is now called Global. We will see an additional menu dedicated to VDOM configuration. Both changes are shown in the following screenshot:

From now on, only accounts...