Central management

Administering one or two FortiGate units is fairly simple enough, especially when they are in the same room or building. However, if you are administering many FortiGate units that may be located in locations in a large geographical area, or in the world, you will need a more efficient method of maintaining firmware upgrades, configuration changes, and updates.

The FortiManager family of appliances supply the tools needed to effectively manage any size Fortinet security infrastructure, from a few devices to thousands of appliances. FortiManager appliances provide centralized policy-based provisioning, configuration, and update management, as well as end-to-end network monitoring for added control. Managers can control administrative access and simplify policy deployment using role-based administration to define user privileges for specific management domains and functions by aggregating collections of Fortinet appliances and agents into independent management domains. By locally hosting security content updates for managed devices and agents, FortiManager appliances minimize web filtering rating request response time and maximize network protection.

This chapter describes the basics of using FortiManager as an administration tool for multiple FortiGate units. It describes the basics of setting up a FortiGate unit in FortiManager and some key management features you can use within FortiManager to manage the FortiGate unit. For full details and instructions on FortiManager, see the FortiManager Administration Guide.

This section includes the topics:

• Adding a FortiGate to FortiManager
• Configuration through FortiManager
• Firmware updates
• FortiGuard
• Backup and restore configurations
• Administrative domains

In order for the FortiGate unit and FortiManager unit to properly connect, both units must have compatible firmware. To find out if your firmware is compatible, refer to the FortiOS or FortiManager Release Notes.