System date and time settings

The system date and time are important for FortiGuard services, logging events, sending alerts, and certificates that have a time requirement to check for validity.

The wrong time makes the log entries confusing and difficult to use. If all devices have the same time, it helps to correlate log entries from different devices.

When possible, use Network Time Protocol (NTP) to set the date and time. This is an automatic method that does not require manual intervention. However, you must ensure that the port is allowed through the firewalls on your network. FortiToken synchronization requires NTP in many situations.

For information about setting the system date and time, see Setting the system time.

To view and configure the date and time in the GUI:

1. Go to Dashboard > Status. The date and time are displayed in the System Information widget, next to System Time.

2. Go to System > Settings.

3. In the System Time section, select NTP, and then configure the Time Zone, and Set Time settings as required.

To view the date and time in the CLI:

# execute date
current date is: 2024-07-23

# execute time
current time is: 14:17:00
last ntp sync:Tue Jul 23 13:25:21 2024

To configure the date and time in the CLI:

Use the set timezone ? command to display a list of timezones and the integers that represent them.

config system global
    set timezone <integer>
end
config system ntp
    set type custom
    config ntpserver
        edit 1 
            set server “ntp1.fortinet.net”
        next
        edit 2
            set server “ntp2.fortinet.net”
        next
    end
    set ntpsync enable
    set syncinterval 60
end