Fortigate: FortiManager Models Comparison

FortiManager is a centralized management platform made by Fortinet for administering lots of Fortinet devices (mainly FortiGate firewalls) from one place. Instead of logging into each firewall individually, FortiManager lets you manage them all through a single console. FortiManager comes in different models (deployment options), not just one hardware box, like – FortiManager Hardware Appliances, FortiManager Virtual Machine (VM), FortiManager Cloud.

A robust firewall is the first line of defense in any network. A good firewall provides an effective defense against cyber threats.

Fortigate FortiManager centralizes the management of Fortinet based security infrastructure components. Deployment of new devices, distribution of updates, installation of security policies across managed devices, all can be achieved using a common interface.

Devices discovery, auditing, group based management, complex mesh and STAR VPN networks can be managed resulting in drastic reduction in management costs. It is complemented by FortiAnalyzer for log aggregation and reporting.

In today’s article we will understand the difference between various FortiManager models, their key differences, and how they are used.

What is a FortiManager

FortiManager enables centralized management of Fortinet assets across the networks for security infrastructure. FortiManager can be scaled to manage thousands of Fortinet devices and agents. All assets can be managed centrally or in a distributed manner. The FortiManager major capabilities are:

Centralized or distributed management – FortiManager allows centralized or distributed management of devices and agents where some tasks are handled locally
Global object database – reuse of common configurations across devices
Appliance based centralized management – no third party Operating system or hardware required here
Automated devices provisioning and policy management – Policy maintenance across all managed assets.

FortiManager Models Comparison

Features	FortiManager Virtual Appliance	FortiManager-100C	FortiManager-400B	FortiManager-1000C	FortiManager-3000C	FortiManager-5001A
Capacity	Network devices supported 5000	Network devices supported 20	Network devices supported 200	Network devices supported 800	Network devices supported 5000	Network devices supported 4000
Capacity	Agents supported 120,000	Agents supported 2500	Agents supported 10,000	Agents supported 25,000	Agents supported 1,20,000	Agents supported 100,000
Administrative domains	200	10	10	50	200	100
Administrative Web Portals	100	10	10	50	100	100
Web portal users	4000	200	200	500	4000	4000
Disk storage capacity	60 GB	1 TB	500 GB	1 TB	2 TB	80 GB
High availability	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Hot swappable power supply	Yes	No	No	No	Yes	Yes (In-built in Chassis)
10/100 Ethernet		1	No	No	No	No
10/100/1000 Ethernet		2	4	4	4	2
Security	Antispam, Antivirus, Intrusion prevention, Vulnerability management, Web filtering	Antivirus, Intrusion prevention, Vulnerability management	Antivirus, Intrusion prevention, Vulnerability management	Antispam, Antivirus, Intrusion prevention, Vulnerability management, Web filtering	Antispam, Antivirus, Intrusion prevention, Vulnerability management, Web filtering	Antispam, Antivirus, Intrusion prevention, Vulnerability management, Web filtering
Device type	Virtual appliance	Hardware appliance	Hardware appliance	Hardware appliance	Hardware appliance	Hardware appliance
Features		Single interface configuration	Single interface configuration	Can manage large number of devices	Enterprise grade management appliance	Large enterprise wide deployments
		Policy based management	Policy management	Edit, create and deploy security policies	Devices grouping based on geo or functional domains	Centralized policy, segmentation, automation, scripting
		Automated deployment of devices and agents	Centralized updates	Secure SD-WAN deployment	Policy based automated provisioning	Content delivery and automated updates
		Secure SD-WAN deployment	Device and policy auditing capabilities	Zero touch provisioning	Re-use of common configurations	VPN management,
		Role based access control		Automation via REST API and scripts	Automation via REST API and scripts	Security fabric integration, complex mesh and STAR VPNs management
		Supports High availability		Multi-tenancy administrative domains supported	Complex STAR and Mesh VPN management	Clustering supported for increased capacity
				Automation of firmware updates	SSL VPN configurations
Use cases	Private cloud such as VMware, Hyper-V, KVM etc.	Small enterprises	Mid-size deployment s	On premises deployment	On premises deployment	On premises deployment