FortiCache software is disappointing

[victorcreed]

Hello

Unfortunately I have to say that the FortiCache software is disappointing.

So far we discovered bugs with LACP, SSL Inspection, and FSSO.

And caching does not work properly, the minimum thing that should be good at!

If you are thinking of buying this appliance: please please do a proof of concept beforehand using the VM.

Anyhow I would welcome other people’s views.

Thanks,

[emnoc · Accepted solution]

Care to explain what exactly is poor? Remember not all items are beneficial from a cache stand point.

I do have to agreed that  Forticache is not up to standard with other common caching solutions, ( bluecoat, riverbed, WAAS, etc... ) but the configuration and deployment is very easy. We have deployed the 3000Cs and a few 1000s and so far we are on the line with the benefits over vrs the dollars spent.

FWIW;  we had 3x units that exhibits out-of-box failures that gave us problems before even going live ( 1x bad ethernet port and the other  2x had a bad drive or something storage related  that required a RMA )

A PC is ideal if you do happen to have  intentions  with buying any cache appliance. I'm not sure how you can really compare a virtual appliance with regards to performance against the  hardware appliances tho. If you are not 100%  happy, speak to the channel manager and/or better the product manager.

ken

[khassan_FTNT]

victorcreed wrote:
 Unfortunately I have to say that the FortiCache software is extremely poor.

So far we discovered bugs with LACP, SSL Inspection, and FSSO.

And caching does not work properly, the minimum thing that should be good at!

If you are thinking of buying this appliance: please please do a proof of concept beforehand using the VM.

victorcreed,

If you opened tickets with the support for these problems they're probably all fixed now. Make sure you use latest firmware version: 3.0.5

Can you explain what you mean by "Caching does not work properly", is there some URL that should be cached that are not ?

If you need help and want to make progress with your problems, please provide verifiable information other than just "does not work properly",

otherwise we won't be able to reproduce and verify if it's a bug, a bad configuration or a misunderstanding.

Thanks.

[victorcreed]

Hello

Of course we have open support calls and as a result two bugs have been found so far:

[ul]

0278647 - Remove port up/down config when interface in LACP Group - Fixed on 3.0.5

Bug identified, Pending fix – SSL Inspection not working simultaneously with Web Filtering on same policy.[/ul]

But all this investigation/troubleshooting takes a significant amount of time. For me these two bugs are very basic functionally that should have been fully tested by Fortinet before the software going live.

We now have a ticket open regarding a problem with the caching functionality, I will update with outcome.

[victorcreed]

Update:

Appliance is maxing out the memory, hence caching and serving requests is slow. 

In built 21 the GUI memory dial does not show true memory utilization, in fact always show 0% utilization, this is registered under bug  ID 0232279.

[khassan_FTNT]

Bug 232279 is solved in 3.0.5

If you're maxing out memory, you might have a sizing problem.

- each model has a maximum bandwidth, make sure the bandwidth going through your model is the same one used for the sizing.  

- make sure you have all disk slots provisioned with a disk

- make sure all disks are formatted

- make sure the webcache-storage-percentage setting is set as follow for all disks (HD1, HD2 ...)

config wanopt storage

  edit "HD1"

    set webcache-storage-percentage 80

  next

end

Thanks.

[victorcreed]

We still have a few issues, the latest is a bug with SNMP in version 3.1.x and earlier versions 4.0.x.

Basically the Fortinet core + FortiCache MIBs do not work, only basic RFC OIDs respond to queries. Again this is something very basic that should have been checked before releasing the code.

Apparently this will be fixed in version 4 build 14. Bottom line: I would recommend doing an extensive proof of concept before committing to implement this product.

[Carl_Windsor_FTNT]

This is resolved in Bug Fix 356420 which will be in 4.0.3 due for release in the next 24 hours.