Fortigate FortiWifi 40F - v7.4.9

[Araujoctr]

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am experiencing a situation where my Fortigate (FortiWifi 40F) is experiencing unexpected power outages (the Fortigate suffered an unexpected power failure!) and even with VPN tunnels up, the equipment only works again after a reboot. Has anyone here encountered a similar situation? Thank you for your attention.

[ede_pfau]

Hello,

and welcom to the forums.

The reason for the power is external, right? Even if the FGT in your perception is failing without reason (that is, without a noticeable power failure), it still might have been a glitch on mains which causes the power supply to fail.

Two things come to my mind:

1- consider getting a UPS  (uninterruptible power supply) for your FGT, switch and modem. Cost is moderate, protection is guaranteed and cost saving in case of overvoltage is high.

2- (at least) let the FGT repair it's filesystem automatically on reboot. Combined with a daily reboot, you would not have to worry about device health so much. Of course, if the device fails in the middle of the day, nothing else but a reboot will help.

conf sys global

   set auto-fsck enable

   set daily-restart enable

   set restart-time HH:MM

end

It could be a faulty power supply as well. IIRC, the 40F has an external plug-in PSU, but nothing too exotic (5V? 9V?). You might try another one.

Chances that you have a lemon here are small though.

[Araujoctr]

Dear Sir/Madam, thank you for your attention to this situation.

It is striking that we have several firewalls of this model (FortiWifi 40F) in our network, and a group of these devices are exhibiting this behavior. They are distributed across different cities, yet this network unavailability occurs on these units, even with VPN tunnels up.

[ede_pfau]

Hello,

I just want to add that to my knowledge there is no known weakness in the hardware of this particular model. Still, my suspicion would be that the plug-in power supply might be at fault - less tolerant to over- or undervoltage. 

If you could reproduce the situation in your lab (on your desktop), you could observe whether other IT equipment is failing at the same moment. If not, get a different (brand of) power supply to eliminate or confirm this as the source of failure. I know, the snap-in plug is "special", but you can buy these online.

Lot of hassle, I feel you. If it gets too insecure, you can always open a support case and ask for a hardware replacement. Fortinet will try to pin down the source of failure in it's own interest, so either FGT or power supply.