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Get started with Firewall

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Launch a firewall on an hourly plan in one of your VPCs, give it one of your reserved IPs as its public address, and sign in to the FortiGate’s screen. From there you set the firewall’s policies, routes, and VPN tunnels.

An hourly firewall is charged from the time it first reaches Running until you delete it, and it keeps charging while it is powered off. Delete it when you are done if you are only trying it out. See Delete a firewall.

You need:

  • An account that can pay for the firewall. A prepaid account needs enough infra credits for about 24 hours of the plan, or for the plan’s minimum billing amount if that is higher. A postpaid account needs an approved postpaid request.
  • An Active VPC in the region you will use. You can also create one from the create form. See Create a VPC.
  • A reserved IP with the status Available in this project, or reserve one from the create form. A reserved IP is billed monthly for as long as it is reserved. See Reserve an IP.
  • A role in the project that lets you create firewalls.

Firewall is available in Delhi and Chennai. Pick the project and region in MyAccount first; the firewall is created in the ones you have selected.

Choose a plan

Section titled “Choose a plan”
  1. In MyAccount, under Network, click Firewall. If you have no firewall yet, click Get Started. Manage Firewall opens.
  2. Click Add New Firewall. Create Firewall Appliance opens with the list of plans.
  3. Compare the plans. Each row shows its CPU, IOPS, RAM, Storage, and Price, the hourly rate with the monthly rate beside it. Each plan comes with one Fortinet service package, so the plan you pick also sets the package. To narrow the list, use All vCPU, All RAM, and All Storage.
  4. Click the plan you want, or its Select button. The plan’s details open.
  5. In —Choose Billing Type–, choose Hourly Billed, then click Create. The create form opens. Hourly suits a first firewall, because a committed term charges the full 30 days at once and that charge is not refunded if you delete early.

For your first firewall, take the smallest plan that fits. You can move to a bigger plan or another package later with Upgrade Firewall Plan.

Create the firewall

Section titled “Create the firewall”

The create form, also titled Create Firewall Appliance, shows your Selected Plan and its hourly price. Minimum Billing shows the plan’s minimum monthly amount. That amount applies at once on creation, and again on the first day of every calendar month.

  1. In Your Firewall name, keep the name that starts with Firewall-, or type your own: up to 50 letters, digits, underscores, and hyphens.
  2. Under Network, in Select VPC, choose your Active VPC. The firewall gets a private IP in that VPC.
  3. In Select IP, choose your Available reserved IP. It becomes the firewall’s public IP for as long as the firewall exists.
  4. Click Create My Firewall. The button turns on once the name is valid and you have picked a VPC and a reserved IP.

Manage Firewall opens with Firewall Creation is in progress., and your new firewall reads Creating. For help with any message, see MyAccount refuses to create the firewall.

Wait for it to run

Section titled “Wait for it to run”

Status reads Creating and updates by itself. A new firewall usually reaches Running within a few minutes, and the FortiGate’s screen opens about two minutes after that. When the firewall is running, Firewall started Successfully shows and Status reads Running. Billing starts at this point.

Get the launch email

Section titled “Get the launch email”

When the firewall first runs, E2E emails its sign-in details to you, the person who created it, with the account owner copied. The email, Congratulations on launching Fortinet Firewall Appliance, gives:

  • The firewall’s name, its public IP, and its private IP.
  • Username : admin.
  • Password, as a link to a MyAccount page that shows the password. The link works for seven days.
  • URL: https://, the address of the FortiGate’s screen.

Open the password link now and keep the password somewhere safe.

Sign in to the FortiGate

Section titled “Sign in to the FortiGate”

The FortiGate’s screen is ready about two minutes after Status first reads Running.

  1. In a browser, go to https://<public-ip>, where <public-ip> is the firewall’s public IP from the email or from Public IP on Manage Firewall.
  2. Sign in with the username admin and the password from the email.

The screen opens with the firewall’s public IP and VPC address already set on its interfaces, and its licence already loaded; you can check the licence status here. Set the firewall’s policies before you send traffic through it. For the first sign-in step by step, and what to set first, see Sign in to the FortiGate.

What to do next

Section titled “What to do next”

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