Fortiswitch questions

[waxensens]

Hello everyone.

I have around 20 Cisco sg500x switches that I would like to slowly move over to 248E-FPOE and 248E-POE. Right now the sg500Xs are doing L3. I plan to move L3 to my two FG100Es.

Here are my questions:

1. The "Advanced licensing feature" is only needed if I want to use dynamic routing, right? Is it a perpetual license or is it a subscription?

2. Do I need to buy any other licensing or support for the switches or are they covered under the Fortigate's UTM bundle?

3. If I have the switches connected to the gate with fortilink, can I still manage the individual switches with Web or CLI if needed?

4. With fortilink, can I daisy chain switches together? Like Gate -> switch -> another switch and still manage both switches from the Gate?

5. If a switch is first set up in standalone mode, does adding it to the Gate wipe its config?

Are there any gotchas I should prepare for or anything else I should be planning for?

Thanks for reading.

[abelio]

Hi, let me answer your questions afaik
1. Only needed if you plan to use your FSW in standalone mode with dynamic protocols (OSPFv2, RIPv2, VRRP, BGP, ISIS) and multicast protocol PIM-SSM.   I believe it's perpetual once enabled, confirm this with  your reseller please.

2. No additional licenses to work with it.

3. Using fortilink you manage your fortiswitches through Fortigate;  all FSW management is done on the FGT web o CLI (or fortimanager if used). You don't need to log on FSW.
But, if access to an individual  FSW CLI is required, you can connect to it over SSH or Telnet.
(SSH/Telnet access must be enabled in the MGMT interface of your FSW248s.)

4. Yes. The number of FSWs you can control with fortilink is related to Fortigate model.

5. Yes.

If you plan to move your L3 entirely to your FortiGate and use Fortilink to manage your FSWs, probably you will not need advanced features licenses.