Technical Tip: How to properly shut down or reboot a FortiGate

Anthony_E · ‎07-21-2005

Description

This article describes best practices for shutting down or rebooting a FortiGate.

Scope

FortiGate.

Solution

Always shut down the FortiGate operating system properly before turning off the power switch to avoid potential hardware problems.

To power off or restart a FortiGate unit correctly, follow the below steps:

From the GUI, go to the top right and select the 'admin' user login -> System -> Shutdown or Reboot and then select OK to proceed:

From the CLI, execute one of the below commands depending if it is necessary to perform a shutdown or reboot of the device:

execute shutdown

execute reboot

Shutting down

In the case of shutdown, once the shutdown has been performed via GUI or CLI, it is possible to safely turn off the power switch or disconnect the power cables from the power supply.

Schedule the shutdown or reboot at a specific time:

Where needed, the automated schedule action for firewall shutdown or reboot can be defined using the following automation stitch:

config system automation-action
edit "Shutdown"
set action-type cli-script
set script "exec shutdown" (or in case of reboot: set script "exec reboot")
set accprofile "super_admin"
next
end

config system automation-trigger

edit "Automatic_shutdown"

set trigger-type scheduled
set trigger-hour "xx" <- 'xx' is the hour of the time to schedule the script action.
set trigger-minute "yy" <- 'yy' is the minute to schedule the script action.

config system automation-stitch

edit "Automatic_shutdown"
set trigger "Automatic_shutdown"
config actions
edit 1
set action "Shutdown"

set required enable
next

end
next

end

To configure the schedule for shutdown or reboot from GUI, go to Security Fabric -> Automation and configure 'Action', 'Trigger' and 'Stitch' as below:

In the case of reboot, the only difference is to write on the 'Script' field: exec reboot.

Note:

It is necessary to define the trigger hour and trigger minute. The requirement and the command will be executed based on the firewall time. Check the firewall date and time with the following command:

exec date
exec time

It is also possible to program daily restarts for the FortiGate. It can only be set with the CLI command below (example):

config system global

set daily-restart enable

set restart-time 05:06

Related articles:

Technical Tip: Programming a daily restart (reboot)
Technical Tip: Automated script execution