Associate Fortilink behaviors to a software/hardware switch?

[NotApothem]

I am trying to limit how many ports I am using between my Fortigate and my Fortiswitch. I want to have multiple vlans, the fortilink, and several physical ports all associated to the same hardware or software switch environment. All the documentation I have read (as well as forum posts) seems to dance around being able to learn about devices or associate devices outside of the dedicated Fortilink interface that is hardcoded into my fortigate.

Part of this is so I can use a single cable to my fortiswitch to manage it and pass data, but also have other connections outside of the fortiswitch share the same VLAN and/or DHCP pool.

Am I misunderstanding what the Fortilink interface is? Based on my setup and current understanding, it seems like I have to have 2 separate connections into my fortiswitch. One for the fortilink to manage the switch, and then another connection to actually pass my traffic at full speed without getting limited by the throughput behavior of the fortilink interface.

Can someone help me clarify how this works, or reference some additional articles about how I can either eliminate the hardcoded fortilink interface so I recreate the behavior using else and still be to trunk multiple vlans (including management) into a switch using a single port?

[somersaultsqualid]

FortiLink isn’t a normal interface you can merge into a hardware/software switch. It’s a special management + data channel, and once a port is turned into FortiLink, it stops behaving like a regular FortiGate port.

But the good news is: you don’t need two cables.
A single FortiLink trunk can carry both switch-management traffic and all your VLANs at full speed. Just put your user VLANs on the FortiLink interface and map them to ports on the FortiSwitch and FortiGate as needed.

What you can’t do is move FortiLink inside a switch interface or recreate it manually — FortiOS doesn’t allow that. The proper method is simply:

1. one port (or LACP pair) as FortiLink,

2. add VLAN interfaces on top of it,

3. extend those VLANs to whatever ports you want.

That gives you a single-cable setup without losing performance. If you need more bandwidth, use LACP FortiLink.

https://docs.fortinet.com/document/fortigate/7.2.0/fortiswitch-managed-by-fortigate/828254/fortilink... snow rider