FortiGate 70G firmware

[Jirka1]

Hi,

we are planning to buy some 70G - now I have learned that they only support version 7.0.
Is there any ETA for version 7.2/7.4?

Thanks.

Jirka

[dingjerry_FTNT]

Hi @Jirka1 ,

We do have a special build (Build 6403) image for the FGT 70G model in FortiOS 7.2.8.

The 7.4 GA build for 70G is supposed to be merged into 7.4.8 GA. The ETA is in late April.

[bldr]

Jirka:

 Although it's not documented, the 70G and other G series are really beta products.  As mentioned, they make a special build for products that are not ready for prime time.  These builds do not contain backported patches for security vulnerabilities, so they are essentially selling products with known exploits.  You won't be PCI or meet other compliance requirements until it goes GA, and while Fortinet may estimate April, you could end up a worthless hunk of metal for much longer.

Take a look here for all the vulnerability you get when you buy a G series.:

PSIRT Advisories | FortiGuard Labs

[robrest]

🤯 :grimacing_face: :face_screaming_in_fear:

[Toshi_Esumi]

I wouldn't call it "beta". Because the hardware won't change. It's just the software that has to catch up, which generally takes a year or so to be mature. I think the 70G has just been released this year unlike other models of G-series, which have been out there since last year or even before. So even if I buy it now, I would just wait for the GA software with good reputations before deploying it.

Toshi

[bldr]

Perhaps the label "Beta" doesn't ring for you when it comes to firmware.  Some might call it a Release Candidate, or simply not-ready-for-primetime.  The important is the part we seem to agree on: anyone buying a G series may have to wait for an unknown period of time before deploying while waiting for a release that doesn't have published known vulnerabilities.

This is in contrast to much of the hardware we buy: we expect it to be production ready unless explicitly labeled differently from the vendor. We may purchase a piece of hardware and run it in a test environment for weeks or months but really wouldn't waste our time on firmware that we'd have no intention of using (e.g., firmware that lags behind GA).

A shiny new G series can sit on the shelf for months, a year and perhaps longer while you wait the firmware to go GA.  Presumably, folks are paying a good amount of money for a software/support license that is of little value until it's deployed.

One can identify a special build by comparing the build number with older hardware releases. For example, the 90E and 90G are fully supported under a GA release. For the 7.2.11 firmware, both were released with a build number of 1740.

Compare that with the 70F and 70G. The 70F also has a 7.2.11 release build of 1740 (released on 2025-02-12). But the 70G has a release build of 6570 and came out a little over two weeks later.

Buyer beware.

[DavidMcQueenLPS]

It would have been nice to know this from our Suppliers.  I have a 70G and a 90G on my desk.  The 70G, 7.2.11 with our custom build scripts worked as expected.  Will be installing at a production location this weekend, replacing a 60F.

We are sitting on the fence between replacing all of our 60Fs with 70Gs and staying at 7.2.x for the next year or Moving our 80Fs to the smaller sites and replacing the 21 60F with 90G.  Not sure if the budget will allow for option B. 

If we choose option A, we may have a Christmas change over to 7.4.x.  I dislike mid year major updates.

FYI, we are a school board.

[cberube]

I agree it would have been helpful if our suppliers had informed us that the 70G devices don't support FortiOS 7.4.x. I currently have four 70G units that I can't integrate into our FortiFabric because they're not compatible with the current OS version.

Does anyone know when the 70G will support 7.4.x or 7.6.x?