Advice on Buying 100E or Not

[nistor]

Hi Guys,

I’ve been using a FortiGate 60E in my homelab for about a year now, and it’s been working great. However, I’m considering upgrading to something more powerful with additional ports. I recently came across a good deal on a FortiGate 100E for around $100 USD.

Before making the purchase, I’d like to hear from others: is it worth upgrading to the 100E, even though support is scheduled to end in 2026?

I don’t have the budget to buy one of the newest models that’s I am looking at older models.

[Yurisk]

It is hard to recommend without the context. Does your 60E handles all the loads well? Do you have equal or at all subscriptions for both of them? What are you planning to do when EOS comes - buy new model, ride the current one as long as possible? 

Beyond number of ports and better specs for FGT 100E (which for lab environment usually do not matter) the 60E has 7.4 branch and so will be supported up to Nov 2027, while 100E is on the 7.2 as the last FortiOS branch and will have support only up to Sep 2026. To me, for example, having access to the more current FortiOS is more important than number of ints/better specs in the lab environment.