| Description |
This article describes an expected behavior that can occur if additional hard drives are not added during initial FortiManager-VM deployments. |
| Scope | FortiManager-VM. |
| Solution |
When initially deploying FortiManager as a virtual machine, administrators typically start by downloading the FortiManager VM Image .zip bundle from the Fortinet Support Site (since it contains disk images compatible with the chosen hypervisor). However, most of these .zip image bundles only include a single virtual disk image that stores the FortiManager operating system (e.g., fmg.<virtual disk file ext.>), with the VMware ESXi/vSphere package being a notable exception for including both the base disk (fmg.vhdk) and a premade log/storage disk (datadrive.vhdk).
Because these image bundles only include the single hard disk image, administrators who do not read the deployment instructions (perhaps due to familiarity with deploying VMs on the chosen hypervisor) may deploy the FortiManager-VM with the single virtual hard disk. However, administrators must add at least one additional virtual hard disk to their FortiManager-VMs in the virtual machine settings beyond this base disk image.
While FortiManager will function correctly without these additional virtual disks, failure to add any additional disks will result in the FortiManager-VM losing the vast majority of its configuration whenever a reboot/shutdown/unexpected power-off occurs, such as any additional ADOMs configured while the FortiManager-VM was running.
The reason that this occurs is that the /var directory (used to store the configuration, amongst other functions) cannot be saved persistently to the base virtual disk used for the operating system. It may only be saved to the LVM logical volume (which is composed of all additional disks added to FortiManager), or it is saved in rootfs if no additional disks exist (i.e., it is saved in RAM/memory, which is not persistent between reboots).
How to check if FortiManager-VM has secondary virtual disks attached: There are a few methods available to check if this situation is present for an existing FortiGate-VM deployment:
The best method would be to access the FortiManager's virtual machine configuration directly on the hypervisor, as one can check to see if virtual disks have been attached besides the base OS image.
Another option is to check the FortiManager GUI Dashboard's Alert Message Console for messages stating '/var' is not mounted:
Note that this message may also appear if a FortiManager that previously had data disks configured no longer detects those disks. See also this article: Troubleshooting Tip: Hardware appliance disk showing as offline and is unable to boot into the syste..., as well as Technical Tip: Reducing VM storage size / Removing a disk from LVM.
A third option is to run the command execute lvm info from the FortiManager CLI to check for the presence of physical volumes/disks used by the LVM logical volume:
FortiManager # execute lvm info
Disk 1: Unavailable 0
To start LVM: exec format disk
Related documents: |
