Troubleshooting Tip: How to restore object references in FortiManager

In certain circumstances, FortiManager loses address/address group object references, which means they are considered as not being used anywhere. As a result, FortiManager allows deleting the objects since they are not considered used. The 'Where used' field does not show any references:

This occurs despite it being clearly mentioned in multiple policies, as shown below:

If this object was accidentally deleted, it will show as empty in the policy, which may cause installation failures later.

To solve this issue, it is recommended to regenerate the object references using the commands below:

• First, disable 'Workspace' Mode and re-enable it afterwards if it is needed.
• It is recommended to take a configuration backup before running database integrity checks.

diagnose cdb upgrade force-retry restore-deleted-datasrc-by-revision
diagnose cdb upgrade force-retry remove-nonexistence-datasrc
diagnose cdb upgrade force-retry add-policy-addr-missing-ref

FortiManager will check for any errors and fix them, and will create new references in its database for the missing objects.