Find and merge duplicate objects

This feature helps you to find duplicate addresses, services, and groups which have the same name or content.

Find and merge duplicate objects in the converted objects

Find duplicate objects to the connected device

Find duplicate contents to the connected device

Find and merge duplicate objects in the converted objects

This feature helps you to find duplicate addresses, services, groups which have the same content, and merge them into a single object.

To merge duplicate objects:

1. Click Find Duplicate in the tuning page. This feature is available for addresses, address groups, services and service groups.
2. Duplicate objects would be shown in the pop-out window.



3. To merge a group of duplicate objects, click Merge in the table.
4. The detail of the duplicate objects would be shown in another pop-out window. All the objects (policies, groups, NAT rules) that references the duplicate objects in all VDOMs would be listed.



5. There is a droplist in the bottom of the window. Users can either select one of the name of the duplicate objects, or type a new name in the box.
6. Click Merge, and all the duplicate objects would be unified into the specified name.
7. After the merging is complete, the detail window would be closed and back to the duplicate table window. The record of this merging would be created and all the merging records would be shown in the merging history at the bottom.

Find duplicate objects to the connected device

This feature helps you to compare the addresses, services and groups in the converted config with the FortiGate or FortiManager device connected, then find the objects which have the same name but different content. You can choose not to import those objects to prevent the objects already on the device being overwritten after the import.

To use this feature, FortiConverter needs to connect to a FortiGate or FortiManager device via REST API. For "How to connecting the FortiGate/FortiManager device to FortiConverter", please refer to Connecting FortiGate devices.

After the conversion is completed, go to the conversion tuning page:

1. If you’re not connect to the device, click Install Config on the right-top side.



2. Select the target device and click Connect.



3. Go to category tuning page.



4. There’s a button called Find Duplicate. In the dropdown menu, you’ll need to select the search strategy.
   1. Name on the device (Compare to device objects)

   Search the device objects with duplicate names.

   (You have to connect FortiConverter with the FortiGate/FortiManager device)

   2. Content on the device (Compare to device objects )

   Search the device objects with duplicate content.

   Note: If the name and content are both duplicate, you should instead do a search by a. Name on the device to delete the duplicate items.

   (The content duplicate search would not search for duplicate name and content items simultaneously.)

   3. Content in the current list (conversion result comparison)

   This performs the same feature as Find and merge duplicate objects in the converted objects.

   

5. Please select Name on the device and click OK.
6. It’ll search the object name and content, and show the duplicate objects.

The first table shows the objects with the same name but different content.

The second table shows the duplicate objects with the same name and content.



7. Select the objects you don’t want to import to the target device, and click Save.

The objects will not be deleted permanently, you can always restore them later.

8. The deleted object will not be present in the conversion result or be imported to the target device.
9. If you want to restore the deleted object to the conversion result. You can switch to the deleted table by selecting Table Type.
10. Right click the deleted objects and select Move to Converted.

It’ll be restored to the converted table.

Find duplicate contents to the connected device

This feature helps you to compare the addresses, services and groups in the converted config with the FortiGate or FortiManager device connected, then find the objects which have the same content but different name. You can choose to merge those objects in the converted config to the object on the device.

1. Follow the steps above to connect to a FortiGate or FortiManager.
2. Click Find Duplicate on the tuning page, select Content on the device and click OK.
3. It’ll search the object with the same content and allow you to merge(rename) the object to the existing object name on the device.



4. On each row, you can Merge all the duplicate item(s) on the tuning position to one name.

The best part is we’ll find all the places where reference to these objects and update them accordingly.



5. You can select the existing name on the device or create a new name as you merge.

All the objects on the tuning page would be merged to this one name.

Note: The merged object cannot be recovered.

6. The merge record also shows as below.

After the merge, you cannot merge again based on the same content.

If you want to remove objects with the same content, first go to Find duplicate contents to the connected device, merge the object with the same name to the device. Then, turn to Find and merge duplicate objects in the converted objects, it’ll list all the objects with the same name and content, select the object and delete it.