Doubts about Fortimanager and Fortiswitch.

[fortimaster]

Hi,

I am thinking whether to enable fortilink between my fortiswitches and my firewalls or not (I have several firewalls independent of each other). Actually I have my firewalls managed by FM.  My intention is to integrate the switches with Fortimanager and I think the biggest benefits of fortilink is being able to manage the switches from the firewalls. But, having a tool that manages centrally I don't see great advantages in enabling fortilink. On the other hand, I am not sure if I can integrate the fortiswitches without enabling fortilink in FM. What is your opinion? Thanks ¡¡

[adambomb1219]

You should manage the switches from the firewall via FortiLink.  Much easier, scalable and secure than doing standalone mode.  

The FortiManager talks to the FortiGate that talks to the FortiSwitch.  There is no way to manage FortiSwitches from FortiManager without having FortiLink enabled.

[gfleming]

It is nice and easy to manage all your switches from FortiManager. However, keep in mind once you manage your switches with FortiLink all inter-VLAN L3 routing happens on the FortiGates so make sure you have the capacity to handle this traffic.

[fortimaster]

Thank you for your advice and help, it has been very useful.