FortiNAC and FortiNAC-F

[AEK]

Hello

I have some questions regarding FortiNAC-F.

• I see the main difference is in the new FortiOS like shell, but what are the most important added values in FortiNAC-F?
• How do I choose between FortiNAC and FortiNAC-F? Is FortiNAC suitable for some customers and -F suitable for others?
• As Fortinet has now 2 NAC products, I guess the legacy FortiNAC will be discontinued, right?
• If FortiNAC will be discontinued, when and what will be its last version?
• Since FortiNAC-F is relatively new, is the latest 7.2.5 version considered as mature? Does Fortinet recommends it more than FortiNAC 9.2.8?

[adambomb1219]

FortiNAC software re-versioning

FortiNAC software re-versions to F 7.2 to match the Fortinet fabric. The label “F” in F 7.2 is added to indicate that this is Fortinet Fabric versioning, distinct from the FortiNAC 7.2 that was previously released.

https://docs.fortinet.com/document/fortinac-f/7.2.1/release-notes/965487/whats-new

[adambomb1219]

It's nothing more than a re-versioning, not a new/separate product.

[AEK]

Thanks Adam for your feedback.

Yes it is revesioning but with some important changes like OS, CLI shell, licensing, and other things.

On the other hand the most important for me is that the legacy FortiNAC still exists and still maintained, that's why I asked the above questions.

[adambomb1219]

Yes the base OS has changed from CentOS since RHEL is effectively killing that distro,  Many other network vendors are doing the same thing.  I do not see Fortinet supporting or maintaining the legacy FortiNAC offering since it relies on an end of support base OS.

[ebilcari · Accepted solution]

FNAC running on CentOS will still be supported but the problem is that CentOS will not include any future security updates (EOL Jun 30th, 2024), leaving the OS part unprotected.

You can check the dates in Fortinet Product Life Cycle under software, EOS for 9.4 is 2026-11-13 and 9.2 will go EOES (Engineering support) in 2024-09-29.

It's also possible to update the FNAC application from 9.x to 7.2 when still running CentOS but this is not encouraged for the same security reasons.

New deployments should use FNAC-F and NAC-OS to have a secured setup in the first place and to avoid the migration in the future, also to have the new features that come with the new version of the application.

FNAC-F 7.2.5 can be considered mature, new deployments are currently done with this version.