Technical Note: Configuration of Advanced Mezzanine Card (AMC)

[fgilloteau_FTNT]

Description

This article gives a technical tip for the configuration of an AMC.

Solution

Fortinet has multiple types of AMC which can be added in some hardware units.

These cards give the possibility to extend the physical network cards of the units and also add specific security ASIC.  By default, the AMC is configured to be auto-detected.

config system amc
   set dw1 auto
   set dw2 auto
   set sw1 auto
   set sw2 auto
end

This offers the possibility to detect dynamically the card inserted in the slot, but if the module model is well known and will not change over time, it is better to configure it statically for the following reasons:

• The boot process will be faster if the module is static in the configuration.

• This will also avoid configuration corruption if one day the card is not detected due to a hardware issue, because in this case if the config slot is dynamic and the card is not detected at boot, all config parts related to the additional port provided by the card will be removed!

With a static module configuration, the configuration file will never be touched even if the card is not detected at boot.

Example of a static configuration if an XD4 card has been inserted in slot 1:

config system amc
   set dw1 adm-xd4
end