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)

VDOMs and virtual clustering


Virtual clustering supports a maximum of two FortiGate units in an FGCP cluster, with multiple active VDOMs. Both Active-Passive and Active-Active modes are supported. For every single VDOM we are able to configure a cluster, with a master and a slave unit. The network traffic that is directed to a certain cluster in a VDOM will stay inside this cluster. To keep the number of required interfaces as low as possible, the heartbeat interfaces configured for a VDOM are also used to keep the units in sync for all the clusters in the other VDOMs. Virtual clustering supports a load balancing mode called VDOM partitioning . The HA cluster will be configured as Active-Passive but we will have two or more virtual domains, with the primary and secondary node reversed (so that the unit that is primary for VDOM "A" is secondary for VDOM "B" and vice versa). We will be able to adjust the workload managing the configuration related to the single VDOM. If a failure occurs on...