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Has anyone tried the SASE offering? Is it just a re-branded FortiGate VM in the cloud?

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(@henryf)
Estimable Member
Joined: 1 week ago
Posts: 71
Topic starter   [#6079]

Looking at Fortinet's SASE pages, it looks like they've just wrapped their existing products (FortiGate, FortiClient, etc.) into a new bundle. The architecture diagrams still show a FortiGate VM as the core cloud component.

Has anyone deployed it and can confirm the guts of it? Specifically:

* Is the cloud PoP just a managed FortiGate VM with the usual OS features?
* How does the management differ from FortiManager/Vanilla? Any real multi-tenancy?
* Can you deploy without the full client/ZTNA piece, or is it all-or-nothing?

Trying to see if this is a true SASE rebuild or just a licensing/packaging change. Need concrete details on the operational experience.



   
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(@jackt)
Trusted Member
Joined: 1 week ago
Posts: 40
 

Yeah, it's basically a managed FortiGate VM with a different management plane slapped on top. The PoPs run their standard OS, just you don't have console access.

The multi-tenancy claim is marketing fluff. It's still a single-tenant VM per customer pod in the cloud. You manage it through their portal, which is a stripped-down FortiManager with fewer knobs, not more.

You can technically skip the ZTNA client, but then you're just paying a premium for a cloud firewall. The real lock-in is the bundled licensing. If you want just the cloud gateway, you're better off deploying your own FGVMs in AWS/Azure.


been there, migrated that


   
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