Getting 'Error importing OVF' error when importing FAZ or FMG VM's in VMware Workstation

Every time I try to open an OVF of a FortiAnalyzer or FortiManager on VMWorkstation running on Linux Mint I get the following error:

Error importing OVF: Invalid target disk adapter type: pvscsi

Fortunately the fix for this is easy. Simply edit the .ovf file of the image you're trying to import and change the following highlighted value:

  <rasd:ResourceSubType>VirtualSCSI</rasd:ResourceSubType>

to this:

  <rasd:ResourceSubType>lsilogic</rasd:ResourceSubType>


Save the file and re-import the OVF and it should work now.

How-to: Configure Collector mode on a FortiAnalyzer

The FortiAnalyzer allows you to aggregate logs from multiple FortiGate firewalls giving you a central console to view logs, alerts and run reports for all the FortiGates in your organisation.

 Each FortiAnalyzer can only handle a certain number of logs per second, be it the hardware or VM models. If you have dozens, hundreds or even thousands of FortiGates it would not be feasible to have all these devices send their logs to one FortiAnalyzer. Good news is that FortiAnalyzers can be configured in a 'collector' mode and deployed regionally to take the burden from your Analyzer that is doing the reporting.

One advantage of this is that FortiAnalyzer VMs that have been configured as a collector have no GB per day limitation as their standard config does. This means you'll only need a FortiAnalyzer VM BASE license for each of the remote regions.

In this example I'll configure two FortiGates and FortiAnalyzers that have been configured in collector modes. This will simulate two regions for my organisation and the firewalls within each region. The collectors will then forward their logs to the global Analyzer from where I can run reports for the entire organisation.

The FortiGates are running 5.4.0 and the FortiAnalyzers 5.2.5.

How-to: Automate user browsing from a text file containing URLs

In this blog I'll go through how I configure my lab environment so that computer/users will automatically connect to web servers via a text document on a schedule. The reason I set this up is to simulate constant 'real world' browsing from computers in the lab so that my web filtering reports are filled up when it comes time to demo to customers!

How-to: Create a YouTube report for the FortiAnalyzer

One of the new features of FortiOS 5.2 was the introduction of Cloud Application logging which allows you to track web application traffic like Youtube videos, email address logins and files uploaded/downloaded via Dropbox.

This quick how-to guide goes through creating a small chart that will only show us the YouTube videos that have been watched and the users that watched them.

This config is done a FortiAnalyzer running 5.2.2.

How-to: Change WebGUI HTTPS certificate on Fortinet devices

Below is a list of commands required to change the default HTTPS certificate that gets presented on the admin WebGUI.

For each of these examples I've already loaded a certificate called 'webgui-cert'. Change this value to match the certificate you import.

How-to: Create a SSL VPN login report on a FortiAnalyzer

This quick how-to guide will go through creating a chart/report on a FortiAnalyzer to show successful SSL VPN logins, displaying the date/time, user, mode (tunnel or web) and the remote IP address the VPN was established from.

This config is done on a FortiAnalyzer running 5.0.6.

How-to: Create an interface usage report on a FortiAnalyzer

This quick how-to guide will go through creating a chart/report on a FortiAnalyzer to show the upload, download and total data transfers for interfaces on a FortiGate.

This config is done a FortiAnalyzer running 5.0.5.

***Updated with new CASE selector***