Performance – FortiOS 5.2 Best Practices

Performance

  • Disable any management features you do not need. If you don’t need SSH or SNMP, disable them. SSH also provides another possibility for would-be hackers to infiltrate your FortiGate unit.
  • Put the most used firewall rules to the top of the interface list.
  • Log only necessary traffic. The writing of logs, especially if to an internal hard disk, slows down performance.
  • Enable only the required application inspections.
  • Keep alert systems to a minimum. If you send logs to a syslog server, you may not need SNMP or email alerts, making for redundant processing.
  • Establish scheduled FortiGuard updates at a reasonable rate. Daily updates occurring every 4-5 hours are sufficient for most situations. In more heavy-traffic situations, schedule updates for the evening when more bandwidth can be available.
  • Keep security profiles to a minimum. If you do not need a profile on a firewall rule, do not include it.
  • Keep VDOMs to a minimum. On low-end FortiGate units, avoid using them if possible.
  • Avoid traffic shaping if you need maximum performance. Traffic shaping, by definition, slows down traffic.

Having trouble configuring your Fortinet hardware or have some questions you need answered? Check Out The Fortinet Guru Youtube Channel! Want someone else to deal with it for you? Get some consulting from Fortinet GURU!

This entry was posted in FortiOS, FortiOS 5.2 Best Practices on by .

About Mike

Michael Pruett, CISSP has a wide range of cyber-security and network engineering expertise. The plethora of vendors that resell hardware but have zero engineering knowledge resulting in the wrong hardware or configuration being deployed is a major pet peeve of Michael's. This site was started in an effort to spread information while providing the option of quality consulting services at a much lower price than Fortinet Professional Services. Owns PacketLlama.Com (Fortinet Hardware Sales) and Office Of The CISO, LLC (Cybersecurity consulting firm).

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.