Infrastructure migration to FortiSwtich: issues with VOIP

[507adminJ]

I'm a fairly green network admin, but I am trying to migrate from old switches to new FortiSwitches that we recently purchased. The old switches are a mixture of HPE switches and the FortiSwitches are all 124F-FPOE and 148F-FPOE with a 1024E as the core managed by a FortiGate 201F via FortiLink.

Unfortunately, the Fortigate is not the primary L3 device for most of our main VLANS. Therefore, I am trying to extend VLANS from the old switches to the new switches via a trunk port between the new FS-1024E and the old HPE core. Before I made a physical connection between the core switches, I attempted to create software switches on the FG that had two interfaces as members. One interface was a VLAN on a physical port connected to the old core and the other interface was a VLAN on FortiLink. Both VLAN interfaces had the same VLAN IDs and no IP info as the gateway exists on an aging Sophos device.

I created one of these software switch bridges for a small VLAN and it seemed to work, so I then created another one for our VOIP VLAN. I put the IP phone at my desk onto the VOIP VLAN and it booted with my name and extension on the display as normal so I thought I was in business. Shortly after this (15 minutes or so maybe) a tier one tech came in and asked me if the internet was down... and it was. Rather the interfaces that connect our FG to our ISPs were down. I was already tooling around on the FG gui and when I went to Network > Interfaces I was met with a red box at the top of the page that the device was operating in conserve mode. I really wasn't sure what to do, so I quickly just disabled the software switches that I had created and in a few minutes things went back to normal.

I am now trying to use a physical connection between the two core switches as I mentioned previously instead of software switches on the FG, but I am scared to try again because I don't want to take down our whole network. I apologize for turning this into "story time", but I am not entirely sure where my problem lies. I am trying to give an overview of my situation rather than ask something like "How do I configure VOIP on Fortinet gear?" in case the duct-tape and popsicle sticks nature of my set up is the larger issue.

Thank you in advance for any assistance that you're willing to provide.

[Jean-Philippe_P]

Hello 507adminJ, 

Thank you for using the Community Forum. I will seek to get you an answer or help. We will reply to this thread with an update as soon as possible. 

Thanks, 

[Jean-Philippe_P]

Hello,

We are still looking for an answer to your question.

We will come back to you ASAP.

Thanks,