Technical Tip: Deploy a different version of FortiOS from the AWS Marketplace

Jackie_T · ‎08-10-2023

Description

This article describes steps for selecting a previous version of FortiGate to deploy in AWS if needed.

By default, the AWS marketplace always offers the latest version of FortiGate.

Scope

FortiOS, AWS.

Solution

All the EC2 instance’s images on AWS come with an image ID which is known as the AMI ID.

First, it is necessary to find out the AMI ID of the FortiGate version needed.
In the AWS console, open the AWS CLI console as below:

From the command console, use the following command to check the AMI for FortiOS 6.4.x:

aws ec2 describe-images --region ap-northeast-3 --filters "Name=description,Values=*FortiGate*6.4.*" --query 'Images[*].{Description:Description,ImageId:ImageId,Architecture:Architecture}'

Note: It is possible to change the region value and filter value accordingly to search for other regions and other versions of FortiOS.

After running the command, the follwing output will appear:

From the output, note down the AMI ID accordingly. For example, it is necessary to deploy FortiGate 6.4.14 BYOL FortiGate, hence, the AMI ID is 'ami-0b3e7ce7103fbe5fd'.
Next, in the AWS console, go to the EC2 page, and choose AMI Images on the left panel:

AWS 2.PNG

In the AMI Images page, filter the AMI ID gotten from the previous step, remember to change the filter to 'Public Image'. Then choose to launch the instance:

AWS 5.PNG

Alternatively, use the AMI name:

The rest of the steps will be normal procedures to deploy the EC2 instance. After configuring, it is possible to start deploying the EC2 instance. It will be running on the version according to the AMI ID selected.

In this example, it will be 6.4.14: