Question on Fortigate Firmware version?

[chris93372]

Hello-

Our district has a FG800C with 2K client licenses. I have been told that I cannot upgrade the firmware (currently at 5.2.11) without having to upgrade the client licenses. However, the clients are now at 5.6. I cannot get an answer from either Fortigate or our vendor on whether or not I can upgrade my FG800C to the newest OS (5.6) without losing clients. Can anyone help clarify what I can/cannot do here?

Thanks in advance!

[Markus · Accepted solution]

Hi Chris Same here, but I've got answers. Short: yes, you have to buy new licenses. Your upgrade from 5.2.11 to 5.4.x or 5.6.x will fail with Forticlient license error. Not sure you allready know, but with > 5.4.1 Fortinet has also changed the way you manage Forticlient. There are two parts of FortiClient now, Endpoint Management, and Endpoint Telemetry and Compliance. Endpoint management is for configuration management and provisioning of FortiClient profiles (what you used to be able to do on the FortiGate), this is a separate piece of software now, that runs on a windows server as a member of the domain. The Telemetry and compliance part is licensed on the FortiGate, this allows you to do some network access control.  Management ==> EMS Compliance ==> Telemetry (Fortigate) Management and compliance ==> EMS + Fortigate If you need both features, you have to license EMS + Fortigate. Best, Markus

[chris93372]

Thank you for the information. I'll see what I can do about learning all about 5.2.11. Seeing that managing Forticlient has changed, I may stay at this firmware level for a while.....