FORTINET FG-3500F Firewalls

FG-3500F NP7 Data-Center Firewall

FG-3500F is the non-storage member of the FortiGate 3500F Series. It combines six hardware-accelerated 100/40GbE QSFP28 slots, thirty-two 25/10/1GbE SFP28/SFP+/SFP slots and two 10/1GbE RJ45 management ports in a 2RU chassis driven by three NP7 processors.

Storage variant boundary

FG-3500F has no onboard SSD. The FG-3501F variant adds two 1.92TB SSDs. A quote, replacement or HA pair must preserve the intended model because local logging capacity, weight and power figures differ; the shared 3500F Series data sheet does not make the two PIDs interchangeable.

Grouped 25GbE behavior

The NP7 architecture connects front-panel interfaces through an integrated switch fabric. Fortinet groups the SFP28 ports for speed changes, so moving one port between 25GbE, 10GbE and 1GbE can change the operating speed of its group peers. Freeze the optic inventory and grouped-speed matrix before implementation.

Inspection and scale reference

Fortinet publishes up to 72Gbps IPS, 65Gbps NGFW and 63Gbps threat-protection throughput, plus 595/590/420Gbps IPv4 firewall throughput by packet size. The platform also supports hyperscale session figures only with the required Hyperscale Firewall license. Do not present licensed maxima as base-appliance capacity.

Power, airflow and rollout

FG-3500F uses dual hot-swappable AC supplies for 1+1 redundancy, front-to-back airflow and has no local disk. Confirm rack depth, rail kit, two independent circuits, optic/port group plan, FortiOS compatibility, support and FortiGuard entitlements. Acceptance should cover NP7 offload, SSL inspection profile, HA session pickup, external logging and single-feed failure.

For lower-speed 25/40GbE aggregation compare FG-2200E; for copper density, a 480GB SSD and an explicit fiber bypass pair compare FG-2500E.

Official evidence: Fortinet FG-3500F exact specifications, Fortinet FG-3500F NP7 fast-path architecture and Fortinet current FortiOS supported-model list.