Fortigate 60F will not link to two Fortiswitches at the same time

[dxw]

I recently bought a Fortigate 60F, two FortiSwitches and a number of FortiAPs to upgrade a small Dell/Sophos network at a small campus. While setting up the devices in the lab, I found that I can't use both A and B ports (with the Foritlink symbol) on the Fortigate at the same time. Regardless of which port (A or B) and which switch you connect first, the second port will not light up. Therefore  Fortigate System - Fabric Management can only see one switch at a time. 

I was using port 24 of the switch to connect to the firewall per instruction label on the switch. I also tried just connecting to any port on the Fortigate and changing the port mode. I don't have the firmware versions at hand but they should be fairly recent.

What's going on? Can't image  something this simple to not work. Can someone help?

[Umer221 · Accepted solution]

Hello,

I think this is by design. It is the limitation of your FortiGate hardware model. Only certain enterprise level FortiGate can manage 2 FortiSwitch at a time when connected to 2 separate ports, unless you daisy chain them.

Please go through the following thread:
https://community.fortinet.com/t5/Support-Forum/Issue-with-using-multiple-ports-in-a-FortiLink-inter...

You may be able to connect these switches via a hardware switch or a software switch but not FortiLink.

Here are more details:
https://docs.fortinet.com/document/fortiswitch/6.4.2/devices-managed-by-fortios/617516

[Umer221 · Accepted solution]

Hello,

I think this is by design. It is the limitation of your FortiGate hardware model. Only certain enterprise level FortiGate can manage 2 FortiSwitch at a time when connected to 2 separate ports, unless you daisy chain them.

Please go through the following thread:
https://community.fortinet.com/t5/Support-Forum/Issue-with-using-multiple-ports-in-a-FortiLink-inter...

You may be able to connect these switches via a hardware switch or a software switch but not FortiLink.

Here are more details:
https://docs.fortinet.com/document/fortiswitch/6.4.2/devices-managed-by-fortios/617516

[dxw]

Thanks for the quick reply. It's helpful to know it is by design. But what's the point, then, to have A and B ports marked with a Fortilink symbol in between on Fortigate 60F if it's allowed to connect to one Fortiswitch only?

[dxw]

Okay. I read the documentation. Will use the second fortilink port as a standby. Thanks!

[SonaMuvv · Accepted solution]

Hello Dwang,

The second fortilink port is used for standby, but make sure the fortilink-split-interface setting on the fortilink interface is enabled so only one port will be active at a time.

https://docs.fortinet.com/document/fortiswitch/7.0.8/devices-managed-by-fortios/801208/transitioning...