Technical Tip: Migrating On-premise FortiGate VM to Cloud environment

On-premise FortiGate VM leverages different hypervisor platforms compared to Cloud environment. Hence, it would not be possible to perform a backup and restore function to migrate the FortiGate VM to the Cloud environment.

To migrate the on-premise FortiGate VM to the Cloud environment (Azure has been used in this example), the following steps have to be performed:

1. Backup configuration file from existing on-premise FortiGate-VM.
2. Convert the configuration file with the FortiConverter service.
3. Ensure edit the following attribute to reflect the correct interface and routing information in the cloud environment:
   1. config system interface.
      
      
      
   2. config router static.

4. Once the respective has been done, restore the configuration file in the provisioned Cloud FortiGate.

    

    

5. During the restoration, Azure FortiGate would detect changes in virtual disk usage. FortiGate will perform auto-format and proceed to reboot once again:

    

   

    

6. Log in with the existing login credential on the on-prem FortiGate VM if the admin has not been changed:
   
   

   

    

Ensure that both FortiGates have been provisioned with the same FortiOS version.