Troubleshooting Tip: Managed FortiSwitches go to offline state on the FortiGate due to NTP Daemon consuming high levels of CPU on FortiSwitch

Description

This article describes an issue where managed FortiSwitches show offline on the FortiGate because the NTPD process consumes high levels of CPU on the FortiSwitch.

Scope

Managed FortiSwitch versions 7.6.6, 7.4.9, and earlier versions.

Solution

This issue is fixed in FortiSwitch versions 7.4.10, 7.6.7, 8.0.1, and above. This issue affects the following switch models: FortiSwitch Rugged-424F-POE, FortiSwitch-110G-FPOE, FortiSwitch-124F, FortiSwitch-124F-FPOE, FortiSwitch-124F-POE, FortiSwitch-124G, FortiSwitch-124G-FPOE, FortiSwitch-148F, FortiSwitch-148F-FPOE, FortiSwitch-148F-POE, FortiSwitch-424E, FortiSwitch-424E-Fiber, FortiSwitch-424E-FPOE, FortiSwitch-424E-POE, FortiSwitch-M426E-FPOE, FortiSwitch-448E, FortiSwitch-448E-FPOE, and FortiSwitch-448E-POE.

The issue can occur when the FortiSwitch reaches approximately 250 days of uptime. The following command can be used to check whether the NTPD process is consuming high CPU:

FortiSwitch# fnsysctl top -n 3 -d 3 -b

Workaround:
Rebooting the FortiSwitch resolves the issue and restores normal operation.