It is highly recommended to run the FortiGate appliance on the GNS3 VM ( VMware or VirtualBox) rather than natively on your local machine to avoid performance degradation and nesting issues.
Select the package (usually a .zip file ending in .out.kvm.zip ) rather than an upgrade file.
Before starting, ensure your host machine meets the following requirements to run FortiGate VMs smoothly: fortinet os download for gns3
Modern versions (FortiOS 7.0 and above) require a minimum of 2GB RAM .
To download and install the Fortinet OS (FortiOS) for GNS3, you must obtain a image from the official Fortinet Support Portal . This process involves two main files: the FortiOS image itself and an secondary "empty" disk file required for logging and storage in virtual environments. 1. Pre-requisites for Installation It is highly recommended to run the FortiGate
Follow these steps to legally download the correct image for GNS3: Log in to the Fortinet Customer Service & Support site. Navigate to > VM Images . Select FortiGate as the product and KVM as the platform. Choose the desired version (e.g., 7.4.x).
You must have a free FortiCloud/Fortinet Support account to access the firmware download section. 2. Downloading FortiOS Images To download and install the Fortinet OS (FortiOS)
Once downloaded, unzip the folder to find the fortios.qcow2 image. 3. Importing into GNS3