200f vs 120G or 200G

[danna]

I'm going to be replacing a PA-850 in the next couple of months. My VAR is suggesting a 200F which from a technical standpoint seems fine. I saw the post about the 200G and found the 120G which both seem like steps up from the 200F. I know the 200G being just announced is probably a little risky for production but the 120G was announced 7 months ago. any thoughts on which we should move forward with? i dont want to end up in a situation like i did with our PA's where the sales guy swore they had lots of life left, and then 2 years later PA jacks renewals up super high to force a new device.

[ozkanaltas]

Hello @danna ,

I think the reason why your sales representative recommended the 200F is because they are similar devices in terms of price and performance to the PA 850.

200F is a device that was released 3 years ago and the last order date has not been announced yet. Fortinet provides support for this device for another 60 months after this date is announced. For this reason, you can use the device you bought now for a minimum of 5 years.

You can see Fortinet hardware life cycle chart. 

If you want you can get a price offer for 120G and you can compare it in terms of Price/Performance

[ede_pfau]

Looking at the price-to-performance ratio, the 120G is way more attractive than a 200F. It depends a bit on your future outlook: if you plan for more throughput, more users, higher internal or WAN bandwidth etc.

As usual with Fortinet, a new generation brings along a lot more performance and, usually, better interfaces (like 10G instead of 1G).

There is only one fact you need to be aware of:

it takes FTNT a couple of months to finetune FortiOS to the new hardware platform. Units will be shipped with a working FortiOS version which is not yet "mainstream". Given that the new 90G, the first Fortigate of the G series, is taking a couple of months now to get mainstream merged, any other G series model will be integrated more quickly.

While not in mainstream firmware, you have a very limited choice regarding the firmware train. v7.0, v7.2 and v7.4 are the current release trains, and v7.4 is widely regarded as "bloody edge", with new features (and potentially troubles) being added along the way.

I guess, and that is not confirmed, that I looked up that the 120G will be shipped with a v7.0.15 release. It will work, as it is rock solid by now, but won't be able to get new features of v7.2 for a while. You might consider this.

Apart from that, the 120G is a hell of a machine for that money.

https://www.fortinet.com/content/dam/fortinet/assets/data-sheets/fortigate-120g-series.pdf