Multiple FortiGate's Environment?

[JoshNiel]

Our office consists of a main location with a data center that all of our other sites connect to. Each site has an EDN connection so that they have direct access to us and also direct internet access. We currently have a single FortiGate at our main location. This device is at times near capacity and we need to make some upgrades.

A vendor recommended that we get smaller FortiGate devices at each of our other offices. With us moving our devices to the cloud they feel it would give us better performance. As of now, if our main office goes down nobody is getting out to the cloud, as all web filtering is going through the main office.

My question is, would this be a good solution? Or will it cause more problems? Would we be better off just upgrading our current FortiGate? I'm most concerned about the fact that as of now everything relies on our main office staying up and running. Our phone system is moving to the cloud as well. I want to make sure each office can access our resources in the cloud without having to come back to our office.

[jpforcioli_FTNT]

Hi,

Sorry asking for this but could you please clarify what is an "EDN connection"?

Would help to better understand how you would secure the "cloud" traffic if you no longer wants it to go through your main location.

Best Regards.

[JoshNiel]

An EDN connection basically is like a T1 line. It gives us direct access across our internet providers network to each of our site.

In regards to how to secure the cloud traffic, the vendor's idea was that each site would do their own web filtering, intrusion protection, email filtering and malware/virus protection. Then it would pass all internet traffic out through that point to the cloud.

[DiegCirc]

I would say it is probably a good idea. As you said it will breaking the dependency on the central site, but also the internet access is probably cheaper and will give you better performance than the T1s you currently use.

Depending on the number of satellite sites, you might want to consider FortiManager to simplify management and centralize your logs. We've found that it does simplify operations a lot when managing multiple devices. You make all policy changes in a single place and then get them pushed across all sites.