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SecurityPlus
SecurityPlus
Explorer III
February 21, 2018
Question

Expected Lifespan Of A FortiGate Firewall

  • February 21, 2018
  • 1 reply
  • 23384 views

I'm curious what others feel is the lifespan of a FortiGate firewall. Obviously if a customer outgrows a firewall it would call for replacemnt. Otherwise, how long would you plan to keep a particular firewall in operation? I'm thinking primarily of the lifespan of FortiGate 60D, 50E, 60E, and 100D firewalls.

    1 reply

    Toshi_Esumi
    SuperUser
    Toshi_Esumi
    SuperUser
    February 21, 2018

    When I look back we started deploying FG60D to our customers in 2014 and migrated gradually from FG40C. But 60D support started from v5.0.1 in early 2013 according to the download site. Now in this 2018 we started considering shifting toward 60E. But probably won't be committed until they stop selling 60Ds.

    But when you check the software support, you can find 100D sotware existed even v4.3.x. So it's quite old hardware. I wouldn't consider installing 100D to any new customer but would recommend them to get 100E instead. Difference in performance is quite significant.

    SecurityPlus
    SecurityPlusAuthor
    Explorer III
    February 21, 2018

    I was primarily wondering when, if ever. people would recommend replacing a firewall due to its age. We normally recommend replacing desktop computers, servers, and switches at about the 5 year point in their life thinking that the likelihood of failure would increase after this point in time. Do others treat FortiGate firewalls the same? If so, at how many years in operation would you recommend replacement?

    emnoc
    emnoc
    New Member
    February 22, 2018

    3-5 years should be your plan, but I manage  firewall as old as 2010. I would plan to budget a fw  refresh for 3/5 years if your talking  budgeting but in some case ORGs  have units 6+ years old in service or older.

     

    Ken

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