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Check System Information

When something is wrong or you're documenting a customer site, the first thing to gather is system information: model, serial, FortiOS version, license state, uptime. Both the GUI and CLI surface this — use whichever is faster.

GUI

Dashboard → Status → System Information widget. Shows:

  • Hostname
  • Serial number
  • FortiOS version + build number
  • Mode (NAT or Transparent)
  • System time + timezone
  • Uptime
  • WAN IP

Dashboard → Status → Licenses widget. Shows:

  • FortiCare support
  • FortiGuard AV / IPS / Web Filtering / Antispam subscriptions
  • Each with Active / Expired / Not Activated status
  • Expiry dates

Expired FortiGuard licenses = stale signatures. Renew before they lapse.

CLI

get system status

Returns:

Version: FortiGate-60E v7.2.7,build1577,...
Serial-Number: FGT60ETK1234567
BIOS version: 06000018
...
System time: Mon May  1 09:14:33 2026
Hostname: customer-fw-01
Operation Mode: NAT
Cluster Mode: HA Master    <- if HA configured

Other useful summaries:

# Performance snapshot:
get system performance status

# Per-process CPU/memory:
get system performance top

# Hardware info:
get hardware status
get hardware cpu

# License details:
get system fortiguard
diagnose autoupdate versions   # signature dates per service

When You're Documenting a Customer Site

Capture this set: - Model + Serial (from get system status) - Firmware version (from get system status) - License expiry dates (from get system fortiguard) - HA status (from get system ha status) - Number of configured policies (from diagnose firewall iprope show 100004 | grep -c "rule " or count in GUI) - FortiCloud / FortiAnalyzer connection (from get log fortiguard setting)

Common Issues

  • "Operation Mode: Transparent" surprise. Some installs put the FortiGate inline as L2. Most configs assume NAT mode. If you see Transparent and didn't expect it, that's a fundamental architectural difference.
  • Serial number says "FGVM" prefix. This is a virtual FortiGate (FortiGate-VM), not hardware. Licensing rules differ.
  • License widget says "Not Registered." Unit was never tied to a FortiCare account. Register it at support.fortinet.com so license entitlements apply.