Fortinet Converter Service, what documentation?

30th January 2023

Why; Fortinet charges $36 CA to convert a configuration from one model to another. Seems like a money grab and should be included in any upgrade.

Fortinet will send you an email which includes a .zip compressed .pdf document

It includes some instructions, excluding the important question of which Fortigate to apply the code to? the source or the destination?
Thanks for being useless Fortinet.
But you can just go to the great Fortinet support site and use chat to ask that question, right?
WRONG! Forticonverter has a separate support site with no ability to chat or do useful stuff in general.
But luckily it’s only a choise between 2 things and if you get it wrong you can reverse it right??
WRONG AGAIN. Forticonverter covers their ass by showing lots of warnings not to fuck up or your money is theirs to keep. MWaaahahhhahah

goto the normal support portal and Select the DESTINATION for the converted config. the NEW firewall not the old one.

after clicking the firewall, you will see a dashboard with Add Licenses in the far right Registration pane

Copy the CONTRACT REGISTRATION CODE from the email sent after purchasing the license

You will need to confirm, then Agree, then confirm, then sell your 1st born, sign in blood, provide a stool sample, etc.

When you logon to the FortiConverter separate website, your devices will show up under the Unentitled list in the bottom right.
Initially NOTHING lists as ELIGABLE. Wait a few minutes and hit the refresh symbol. (Not Confusing at all)

Get a coffee while the FortiConverter portal catches up. only took 1 minute for me. Hit the refresh button highlighted below to update. Eventually some Entitled Firewall will show up in the left hand column. Hit the PLUS symbol beside an Entitled firewall to continue.

You will now be run through a Wizard to complete the conversion,
Step 1: enter your phone # to continue

Step 2 you will be asked for the Source the config is coming from, in my case a FortiWifi, Select the target/destination FortiOS, and upload a copy of the Source/From config. It would be a good idea to Upgrade the Target firmware to as close to the source firmware as possible.

Step 3: you will be asked to drag the destination interfaces on the right to their corresponding interfaces on the source firewall on the left. Don’t worry if you have some left over, but try to fill in all the blanks.

Step 4: you will get a review screen that lets you confirm with IP addresses assigned to the interfaces and switches

Step 5: you need to choose the Management interface. On small deployments this is likely the Internal interface, rather than a separate management network.

Step 6: is a summary screen with a Comments field. Click “Create Ticket” to finish

Thanks to Wei Ling Neo for finally providing an answer;

Hi Anonymous;
The FortiConverter Service license is applied to the destination FortiGate (ie the new FGT that you are upgrading to). The existing FGT which you are converting FROM doesn’t need to have the license. We apologize for the inconvenience and will make it a priority to update the documentation as soon as possible.
Thanks.