Fortigate 40C and 5.2.13, to upgrade or not?

[Island_Tom]

Greetings Tech Wizards!

Been a partner a few years and I have a number of older models.  Most are 40c or FWF 40 or 60 C.  Prior to joining FortiCloud I had upgraded one beyond 5.2 and had high CPU issues and had to roll back.  I have some newer units on the newer OSs and I like the features, but not having them has not been horrible.  Most of my clients are Small Business and I keep them on current contracts with Intrusion Prevention, Spam and AV etc.

My question:  Is it safe to stay on the older OS as they haven't done any patch for this in a while?

Thanks!

Tom

[Island_Tom]

Anyone?  Opinions?  

[Dave_Hall · Accepted solution]

Personally opinion - I suspect the 40C's 512MB will be underwhelming on 5.x firmwares - at least it's been in my experience with my own 40C.  That said, according to the Product Life Cycle document for the 40C,  existing maintenance contract (for 40C) can be extended to/on 14-Jan-2022 with product hardware support expiring 14-Jan-2023.  The software (FortiOS) support for 40C is 5.2 only.  So the upshot is Fortinet will continue to support this model as long as it is running 5.2.x, and I suspect that includes any future 5.2.x updates and/or IPS/Virus defs too.

[Island_Tom]

Dave,

Thanks very much.  I will include the lifecycle in my recommendations for 2019 budgets and probably recommend replacement after the maintenance contracts are set to expire.

Thanks again!

Tom