FortiGate HA with One Licensed and One Unlicensed Unit

Forum|Forum|26 days ago
August 12, 2026
6 replies
187 views

Hello,
I have two FortiGate 1800F units running FortiOS 7.4.12. One unit is licensed, while the other is currently unlicensed. I am planning to purchase the required license for the second unit, but it may take some time.
For the time being, I need to configure the two units as an HA cluster before the license for the second unit is available. Is this supported? Will HA, configuration synchronization, and failover work properly during this period? Are there any risks or limitations I should be aware of?
I would appreciate your advice and recommendation.
Thank you.

Best answer by farhanahmed

As mentioned earlier, the HA will be formed and the licenses of lower FGT will be applied. But if you are using webfilters, app control filters - which depends on FortiGuard Subscription - then those will NOT work because of unlicensed FGT in HA.

farhanahmed

Staff

By “unlicensed” do you mean no active support and FortiGuard Subscription ? the HA should still work.
But as you know, it requires a separate set of licenses for each FortiGate in a normal HA cluster, and the cluster operates according to the lowest entitlement among the members. If a service is missing or expired on one unit, the HA cluster can report that service as unlicensed/expired.

This article may help:

www.farhan.ch

sjoshi

Staff

yes HA will still work and ha will be in sync

Even failover and traffic flow will work fine

The only issue is with the license

Example:

FGT A: has support till 2028

FGTB has support till 2027

since both device are in HA it will take the lowest contract expiry dates and now your expiry date will be 2027

If the other devices does not have license do you use webfilter

Thanks, Salon

F

FbigAuthor

Visitor II

Thank you for your response.
No, we are not using WebFilter.
In fact, the second FortiGate, which had the license, was damaged. Therefore, I am currently using a spare device that has not yet been registered or licensed.
I need to temporarily configure HA between the two FortiGates while the administrative process for obtaining the license is being completed. I would like to make sure that this temporary setup will not cause any issues and that HA, configuration synchronization, failover, and traffic flow will work properly until the license is delivered and registered.
Thank you for your attention. I look forward to hearing your thoughts and recommendations.
Best regards,

farhanahmedAnswer

Staff

As mentioned earlier, the HA will be formed and the licenses of lower FGT will be applied. But if you are using webfilters, app control filters - which depends on FortiGuard Subscription - then those will NOT work because of unlicensed FGT in HA.

www.farhan.ch

F

FbigAuthor

Visitor II

Thank you for your clarification.
I tested the HA configuration in a non-production environment, but unfortunately, the test was not successful. During the test, the licensed FortiGate was reset to factory defaults.
Therefore, I would like to wait until I can investigate the issue further and achieve a successful test result. Once I have confirmed that the HA configuration is working as expected, I will mark the ticket as resolved.
Thank you again for your help, support, and guidance.