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KIMM
New Member
October 10, 2025
Question

How does the FortiGate VM handle license renewal in an HA (Active-Passive) setup?

  • October 10, 2025
  • 1 reply
  • 379 views

How does the FortiGate VM handle license renewal in an HA (Active-Passive) setup?

We authenticate the license via FortiManager in a KVM air-gapped environment.

During initial setup, licenses were authenticated separately for each node, but I am curious about how license renewal works after configuring HA.

My concern is whether there might be cases where, when the mastership switches from node A to P, the license renewal might fail, causing the firewall to stop functioning. The master device communicates with FortiManager to check and retrieve the license, but the slave device does not have this information, so it seems like it would not be able to renew the license.

The reason I think this way is based on the information in the link below.
community.fortinet.com/t5/FortiGate/Technical-Tip-How-to-upgrade-FortiGate-VM-license/ta-p/197483

Additionally, the version is 7.4.7

Thank you very much for your attention and support. I look forward to your advice.

Best regards,

1 reply

AEK
SuperUser
SuperUser
October 12, 2025

If I'm not wrong the passive node contacts FortiGuard through the active node.

AEK
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