60E - Opinions?

[sfales]

Hi:

I'm considering buying some 60E's to replace some older 81CM's at branch locations.

I have been buying 90D's and running 5.2 firmware.

The 60E spec sheet shows great improvement over the other models, but I'm skeptical that its "ready for prime time."

I've read in the forums the 50E models had a lot of issues, and E models only come with 5.4, which I have avoided using in production also.

Anyone have experiences (positive or negative) with the 60E yet?

Thanks,

Scott

[Toshi_Esumi · Accepted solution]

I think most of issues discussed for xxE models are not because of the hardware but because of the 5.4.x software. So if it's on 50E, the same would likely apply to 60E.

[hfreel]

Not Ready for Prime Time. Have been disappointed. We have installed a bunch and some show some weird behavior and TAC has not been very effective in fixing them. Stay Away!!!

[Toshi_Esumi]

Can you share which 5.4 version they have running, and what kinds of weird behaviors they're having? That would probably help others. I have a 50E+5.4.3 running since earlier this year but so far no issue I encountered yet although I need to admit it has no UTM stuff activated. 

[hfreel]

3 Issues - We got locked out of one when upgrading. and had to reboot it, but have no idea why. That unit also dropped packets that are directed to the box, we will not put it into production until TAC can tell us why and what needs to be done. We went from 5.4.1 to 5.4.2 and in typical TAC function they will likely tell us to go to 5.4.3 without any further trouble shooting. 

The other unit at another customer will not negotiate or allow us to lock the speed to the switch at 100 Full, it keeps going to Half - when we set it to full the port does down. No it is not the switch as there is a 300D right beside it that works even in the port that the 60E does not. 

And Lastly we have a 60E on a 150Meg Circuit that for some reason we can't get more that 80 Meg throughput out of. 

My company has delopyed well over 100 Fortigates from 60D all the way to 1000D's and I can tell you that these units are not ready. 

[MikePruett]

I have them deployed all over the place and one of my clients has 50E's all over the place. The units are strong and perform well. Any issues have been related to 5.4 code and have been workable.

[bmekler]

I've deployed two so far, both with 5.4.3 code (haven't touched earlier revisions of 5.4), replacing a 60D and a 90D and I'm very much impressed with the deep inspection performance - policies that crushed the previous boxes are barely even felt now. Haven't encountered any show-stopping bugs as of yet.

[przemo]

Recently I replaced the 60D unit to 60E unit. I see a huge improvement in performance. Regarding issues - there are some, but in my case are not burdensome (5.4.2). The only thing that bothers me is two times more memory consumption. After a month the average memory usage is 64%. Fortinet support claims that it is a normal condition.