Technical Tip : How to troubleshoot VM License validation

Description

This article describes how to troubleshoot VM License validation.

Scope

FortiGate.

Solution

Starting from versions 7.4.10, 7.6.7, and 8.0.0, VM license validation is now managed by a separate daemon: cloudinitd.

When anycast is enabled, FortiGate will use the following FQDNs (dedicated validation servers) instead of a general update for FQDNs.

This results in faster and more reliable activation:

vmactivation1.fortinet.net
vmactivation2.fortinet.net
vmactivation3.fortinet.net

When anycast is disabled, FortiGate will use the following FQDNs :

update.fortiguard.net
uspdate.fortiguard.net
eupdate.fortiguard.net 

A new command has also been added to manually trigger VM license validation:

diagnose hardware sysinfo vm setup

For VM license validation debugging with cloudinitd:

diagnose debug reset
diagnose debug application cloudinit -1
diagnose debug console timestamp enable
diagnose debug enable

When VM license validation succeeds, this will be shown:

vmlic setup result:200
vmlic valid:0=>1
vmlic status: warning=>success
vdom:root vm_valid:1 vdom_valid:1
ATTENTION: License registration status changed to 'VALID'
vmlic license:success, status:success, valid:1