Fortigate Vm Trial License For Scalable Remote Access VPN and SD-WAN Solutions

Starting with FortiOS 7.2.1, Fortinet removed built-in 15 days free evaluationlicense from the Fortigate VM images. It was replaced with the permanentevaluation license, still free. The steps to get it have changed - you nowhave to create a free Forticare/FortiCloud account, and use it inside theFortigate GUI to activate this evaluation license. The license will be generatedand added to your Forticloud account automatically.

One license per one FortiCloud account: this means that to have multiple evaluation licenses for multiple Fortigates, we need to create multiple FortiCloud accounts, nuisance but doable. The accounts are still free of charge.

Fortigate Vm Trial License For

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Update August 2022: All the said below is still true, but starting with FortiOS 7.2.1 the process of issuing the evaluation license has changed. So, after reading this article, make sure to read this one as well: Fortigate free VM Evaluation License is now permanent, not limited to 15 days, here is how to get it.

Each Fortigate Virtual Machine (VM) image (until FortiOS 7.2.1) comes with built-in 15 days evaluation license which starts the moment you spin this image in your virtual environment - VMWare ESXi/WorkStation, KVM, GNS3, EVE-NG. Unfortunately, it comes with some limitations you should be aware of so not to waste your time trying to debug them. Here is the list of them.

Note: There is another evaluation license - for 60 days, that you can only get from Fortinet Account Manager. This license, unlike the 15-days one, has almost NO limitations, and you get fully functional virtual Fortigate.

When this evaluation license expires, there is no need to create new Fortigate VM - it is enough to factory-reset this Virtual Fortigate with exe factoryreset or (if you want to keep IP addressing) exe factoryreset2 , this will erase all configuration and will reset evaluation license to 15 days again.

Where do I download the free trial VM of the Fortigate? Probably the most frequentquestion I get asked. And not to stop at the answer "support.fortinet.com", hereis a video walk-through. The version you download has built-in 15 days triallicense, which comes with some limitations you can read about here: -vm-evaluation-license-15-days-limitations/

I am trying to activate a Trial license for a 7.2.1 Fortigate VM - I have an active Fortinet account with FGT's under current contracts. When I try and activate the evaluation license I get the error below.

There are lots of limitation for you to deploy Azure marketplace's Fortigate VM , such as VM size requirement, license requirement, also only for Pay As You Go subscription. For my lab, not for test drive, I might need to deploy a Fortigate firewall into 1vCPU, 1GB Ram B1S size VM, and I will need to use my azure credit or student subscription to play with it.

Getting the free trial was super easy. As soon as they spun it up in the cloud, they said, "Here is your login information. Soon as you get your agent, here is the connection string that you will need with this agent when you have run your install." Done.

The free trial was critical. I don't think we would have gone with it if we had not been able to at least kick the tires on it some. We had to make sure that it wasn't going to interfere with our medical applications that are time sensitive.

The other major vendor that we were looking at besides CrowdStrike was Palo Alto XDR. CrowdStrike is a more mature product than Palo XDR, but with that goes some bureaucratic sluggishness. I personally had some issues with CrowdStrike, as far as getting support in a timely manner when I was still a trial customer. Now, as a full-on customer, I don't have any of those issues as far as slow support. They are always very on top of things. But as a test drive, it took far too long getting any support to get a user reset and logged into the platform. It took days. I was very upset about that. However, with that maturity, you have your full built-in intelligence module, which is one of their big selling points. It was fantastic having all that data.

Try it. Try all the features. Because if you go with a trial and don't try all the features, then you are not going to know if it's going to work for you or not. Try everything that you possibly can. I know some organizations who will "try it" and install it, but they won't do anything with it. In this case, we actually did. We actually tried to use all the features and create issues. We tried to kick the system over, and it didn't.

At my previous company, I did a PoC. The guy who led all the Midwest sales was somebody I knew for around a decade. So, it was, "Hey, I want to try this out because it sounds interesting." So, it was fairly easy. You got the trial. You installed it, then you connected to their cloud portal. That was it. You opened it up to be able to communicate to port 443 outbound, and that was it. It was super easy to get CrowdStrike up and running.

The PoC was important because we were able to test \ and see visibility that we weren't able to before when a system was off-network, just sitting at home, connected on an Internet, and not VPN'd in. It was those sorts of things where, "Look, this is what we can see now that we couldn't see before," as a result of doing that trial.

At my current company, we did not do any type of trial because of past experience. We did test but then just started kind of rolling it out because our other product was just too heavy to continue to operationalize.

Getting the free trial was very easy. It has been years now, but it was as simple as just going to the website and requesting a free trial, then it was stood up maybe even that same day. It is hard to remember now, but it was very quick.

We are protecting 5,500 endpoints with this solution. We do have plans to increase usage. Our environment is rather complex in that we have 6,000 core corporate associates and roughly 5,500 endpoints. Then, we have a distributor network globally comprised of about 220 wholly owned subsidiaries who are essentially their own companies, but they are only licensed to resell our products. They kind of have a mix of endpoint protection because it is largely up to them, within their entity, as what they choose to use. We are looking to further wrap our arms around them from a security perspective. We have looked at acquiring CrowdStrike's complete platform, which would be fully managed to deploy to that distributor network, which is about the same size as our corporate environment. So, it would be roughly another 6,000 users. It is a very large, globally-reaching endeavor, and working through the politics and legal aspects of how we will make that come to fruition may take some time. However, that is the plan.

The CrowdStrike Falcon Pro solution alleviates the need to quote out the product. You initiate the use of the free trial, then opting the purchase. You can manage it all on your own without engaging a sales representative. I definitely have done this in a small business environment.

In all other instances, it was more of a formal business relationship. There was a sales representative involved who queued up the trial environment. If you initiate a trial yourself, you are basically given 14 days to trial it. Whereas, engaging a sales representative allows them to moderate the length of time that you can do the trial. Because we are a larger enterprise with a lot of politics around completing purchases and legal reviews, we have a sourcing department who vets out vendors. The process is very long and cumbersome. We had initiated a trial, in this instance, which ran for several months before we acquired it.

The fact that I have access to the products free for several weeks or months was not really a factor. What was more impressive in the trial was the way CrowdStrike approached it. When you initiate a trial, they give you a CloudFlare instance of a victim machine and an adversary machine. They then allow you the capability to deploy the sensor or pull it back from the victim machine. You can unload whatever you care to against the victim machine for testing to see how well the product works on your own. Unlike many other products in a similar space, when you evaluate the product, it gives you the feeling that you are completely in control. Also, there is a sales engineer who moderates the demonstration of the product.

We took advantage of Falcon's free trial before purchasing it, and it was very easy to get it. We were on the phone with a representative discussing our next steps and they offered the free trial, and we were set up and functional with it the next morning. Having a free trial period is something that is expected. If anybody wants our business in this space then it's necessary because we aren't going to purchase something without trying it first.

My advice for anybody who is looking into implementing this product is that every organization is slightly different in its needs, and CrowdStrike may or may not be the right solution. Once you can do a trial and a bake-off of multiple options, you'll find if CrowdStrike is the right solution or not. 2ff7e9595c