How to Monitor FortiGate Firewall ?

Fortigate Monitoring

This post covers Fortigate Monitoring using i-Vertix to ensure optimal network performance and security. Fortinet’s FortiGate is a series of integrated security appliances that provide a wide range of security and networking functions. Monitoring Fortigate devices is crucial as these devices are designed to protect networks from several cyber threats, ensure secure connectivity, and offer advanced features for network management. Because of their versatility, they are widely used in both enterprise and service provider environments. Above all, FortiGate monitoring is essential for maintaining optimal performance and security in these diverse environments.

Additionally, FortiGate devices are managed through Fortinet’s FortiManager for centralized administration and FortiAnalyzer for logging and reporting. The Fortinet ecosystem also includes additional security solutions, such as FortiWeb (web application firewall), FortiMail (email security), and FortiSandbox (sandboxing for advanced threat detection).

Monitoring Fortigate is easy with i-Vertix

Many of our customers popularly use Fortinet devices. i-Vertix IT Monitoring provides you with preconfigured plugins:

In detail, for each FortiGate it is possible to monitor different aspects, using the SNMP protocol (also version 3), or for some functionalities, communication via Rest API is required. the complete list follows:

Protocols used: Rest API

HA status
Health
Licenses
System

Protocols used: SNMP

AP usage
Cluster status
CPU usage
Disk usage
Hardware status
Interfaces
IPS statistics
Memory usage
SD-WAN
Sessions
Signature updates
Uptime
VDOM usage
Virus events
VPN status

Fortigate Configuration

Configuration is straightforward; create a new host and enter information about the device to be monitored, or utilize Network Discovery and Mapping L2/L3 to automatically detect all SNMP devices in the infrastructure. The FortiGate plugin monitors the system health of a Fortinet FortiGate firewall, including classical aspects such as CPU, memory, hardware components, and interface traffic.

VPN and Performance Monitoring

The VPN service provides information on the number of connected users, IPSec UP and Down tunnels, and traffic in and out. In case of problems, one can track the health of VPN connections. Furthermore, IT Monitoring generates performance graphs for each metric that can be viewed in the Resource View. IT Monitoring continuously monitors the performance of SDWAN links, including metrics such as latency, jitter, packet loss, and throughput. It tracks the performance of individual links as well as the overall performance of SDWAN paths.

WLAN and Access Point Monitoring

Furthermore, for customers utilizing the FortiGate firewall as their WLAN controller, i-Vertix IT Monitoring extends its offerings focused on monitoring access points. This includes monitoring crucial data regarding their status, configuration settings, and performance metrics, including device health.