Upgrading FortiOS for Your Devices

This page contains information, which will help you to prepare for the upgrade of FortiOS on your FortiGate unit. Before you begin an upgrade you need to:

• know where to find information about upgrade paths
• understand the different upgrade methods, and which one is right for your environment
• understand possible issues you could encounter
• understand possible downgrade issues

Supported upgrade path information is available on the Fortinet Customer Service & Support site. This requires credentials on the site.

To view supported upgrade path information:

1. Go to the Fortinet Support Site.
2. From the Download menu, select Firmware Images.
3. On the Upgrade Path tab, select:

• Current Product
• Current FortiOS Version
• Upgrade To FortiOS Version

Every time you perform an upgrade, you should carefully read the Release Notes of the firmware that you are upgrading to. Release Notes may include warnings or exception notices. The release notes can be found on the support site in the same directory as the firmware.

More than just FortiOS can be upgraded

During an upgrade, it is possible that more than just FortiOS has improved. UTM engines like the IPS engine or databases like the antivirus database may have been upgraded. These new engines or database overwrite the existing ones on your FortiGate. To be sure that you have the latest definitions and signatures in these new components, you should consider running the command execute update-now as soon as any upgrades are completed and you have reestablished Internet connectivity.

Older firmware versions

Use the Supported Upgrade Path utility on the Fortinet Customer Service & Support site to determine your optimal upgrade path. However, if you have older firmware versions that are covered by the utility (before 5.2.9), we have some tables to help bring your FortiGate up to the levels of the utility on the support site.

The tables include:

Upgrading to 5.2.13
Upgrading to 5.0.14
Upgrading to 4.3.19

Using the tables instead of the Supported Upgrade Path utility

We recommend using a supported version of the firmware. We realize that there are some outlier circumstances that require the use of an older firmware version. These tables are designed to go up to the latest build of a major firmware version. To keep the tables from becoming unwieldy, they do not all go back to the first version of the firmware.

If you are attempting to upgrade to the latest build of 5.0 or 5.2, the tables go back to 4.2.15. Most users run a more current than 4.2.15. If you upgrade from an even earlier version of the firmware, the 4.3 table has been set up to show how to get to 4.3.19 from any of the earlier versions, going all the way back to 2.50.10

Some older FortiGate hardware platforms do not have the resources to effectively use the most recent firmware versions and so do not support firmware updates past a certain version.

If the device you are looking up is not included in the Product Life Cycle page, go to the Firmware section of the Support Portal and check the first build of each FortiOS version. For example, if there is a firmware build for 5.2.0, there should be one for 5.2.x. If there isn’t one for 5.4.0, it is likely that the latest build in the 5.2 version is as high as you can upgrade.