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victorcreed
victorcreed
New Member
July 20, 2015
Solved

FortiCache software is disappointing

  • July 20, 2015
  • 3 replies
  • 7968 views

Hello

 

Unfortunately I have to say that the FortiCache software is disappointing.

 

So far we discovered bugs with LACP, SSL Inspection, and FSSO.

 

And caching does not work properly, the minimum thing that should be good at!

 

If you are thinking of buying this appliance: please please do a proof of concept beforehand using the VM.

 

Anyhow I would welcome other people’s views.

 

Thanks,

    Best answer by emnoc

    Care to explain what exactly is poor? Remember not all items are beneficial from a cache stand point.

    I do have to agreed that  Forticache is not up to standard with other common caching solutions, ( bluecoat, riverbed, WAAS, etc... ) but the configuration and deployment is very easy. We have deployed the 3000Cs and a few 1000s and so far we are on the line with the benefits over vrs the dollars spent.

     

    FWIW;  we had 3x units that exhibits out-of-box failures that gave us problems before even going live ( 1x bad ethernet port and the other  2x had a bad drive or something storage related  that required a RMA )

     

    A PC is ideal if you do happen to have  intentions  with buying any cache appliance. I'm not sure how you can really compare a virtual appliance with regards to performance against the  hardware appliances tho. If you are not 100%  happy, speak to the channel manager and/or better the product manager.

     

    ken

     

     

    3 replies

    emnoc
    emnocAnswer
    New Member
    July 20, 2015

    Care to explain what exactly is poor? Remember not all items are beneficial from a cache stand point.

    I do have to agreed that  Forticache is not up to standard with other common caching solutions, ( bluecoat, riverbed, WAAS, etc... ) but the configuration and deployment is very easy. We have deployed the 3000Cs and a few 1000s and so far we are on the line with the benefits over vrs the dollars spent.

     

    FWIW;  we had 3x units that exhibits out-of-box failures that gave us problems before even going live ( 1x bad ethernet port and the other  2x had a bad drive or something storage related  that required a RMA )

     

    A PC is ideal if you do happen to have  intentions  with buying any cache appliance. I'm not sure how you can really compare a virtual appliance with regards to performance against the  hardware appliances tho. If you are not 100%  happy, speak to the channel manager and/or better the product manager.

     

    ken

     

     

    khassan_FTNT
    Staff
    khassan_FTNT
    Staff
    July 22, 2015

    victorcreed wrote:
     Unfortunately I have to say that the FortiCache software is extremely poor.

     

    So far we discovered bugs with LACP, SSL Inspection, and FSSO.

     

    And caching does not work properly, the minimum thing that should be good at!

     

    If you are thinking of buying this appliance: please please do a proof of concept beforehand using the VM.

     

    victorcreed,

     

    If you opened tickets with the support for these problems they're probably all fixed now. Make sure you use latest firmware version: 3.0.5

     

    Can you explain what you mean by "Caching does not work properly", is there some URL that should be cached that are not ?

    If you need help and want to make progress with your problems, please provide verifiable information other than just "does not work properly",

    otherwise we won't be able to reproduce and verify if it's a bug, a bad configuration or a misunderstanding.

     

    Thanks.

    victorcreed
    victorcreedAuthor
    New Member
    July 23, 2015

    Hello

     

    Of course we have open support calls and as a result two bugs have been found so far:

     

    [ul]
  • 0278647 - Remove port up/down config when interface in LACP Group - Fixed on 3.0.5
  • Bug identified, Pending fix – SSL Inspection not working simultaneously with Web Filtering on same policy.[/ul]

     

    But all this investigation/troubleshooting takes a significant amount of time. For me these two bugs are very basic functionally that should have been fully tested by Fortinet before the software going live.

     

    We now have a ticket open regarding a problem with the caching functionality, I will update with outcome.

     

     

    • victorcreed
    victorcreedAuthor
    New Member
    August 18, 2015

    Update:

     

    Appliance is maxing out the memory, hence caching and serving requests is slow. 

    In built 21 the GUI memory dial does not show true memory utilization, in fact always show 0% utilization, this is registered under bug  ID 0232279.

    khassan_FTNT
    Staff
    khassan_FTNT
    Staff
    August 18, 2015

    Bug 232279 is solved in 3.0.5

    If you're maxing out memory, you might have a sizing problem.

    - each model has a maximum bandwidth, make sure the bandwidth going through your model is the same one used for the sizing.  

    - make sure you have all disk slots provisioned with a disk

    - make sure all disks are formatted

    - make sure the webcache-storage-percentage setting is set as follow for all disks (HD1, HD2 ...)

     

    config wanopt storage

      edit "HD1"

        set webcache-storage-percentage 80

      next

    end

     

    Thanks.

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