Starting FortiMail VM

Once you successful deploy the OVF file and set up the network (if required), you need to power on your FortiMail VM virtual appliance and enter initial setup commands.

To power on FortiMail VM

Log in to the vSphere Client.
Select your newly deployed FortiMail VM virtual machine in the left navigation pane of vSphere Client and power it on.

There are several ways to power on a virtual machine. The easiest is to click the green triangle icon on the icon bar.

Select the Console tab in the vSphere Client window.

When you power on the virtual appliance, the console displays a sequence of messages ending in a login prompt.

At this point, you have accessed the FortiMail VM command line interface (CLI) but you do not have access to all CLI commands until you confirm the license in a later step.

Press the Enter key once to get a new prompt, and log in using the default FortiMail VM administrator name, admin.

There is no password yet for this administrator. Press Enter when prompted.

You will see a welcome message.

Use CLI commands to configure the IP address of a virtual interface (usually port1) on the virtual appliance to use for administrative access.

You will later access the FortiMail VM web-based manager through a browser at this IP.

Enter the following CLI commands in the vSphere Client console:

config system interface

edit <port_name>

set ip <ipv4-mask>

end

Where:

port_name is the name of the FortiMail VM virtual port (usually port1)
ipv4-mask is the IP (with a netmask) of your virtual machine on the the ESX/ESXi server

Take note of the IP you enter. Later, you will use that IP, minus the netmask, to configure and manage FortiMail VM through the CLI or web-based manager.

Use CLI commands to configure a static route to act as a default gateway. This is needed for license updates.

Enter the following CLI commands in the vSphere Client console:

config system route

edit <index_int>

set gateway <gateway_ipv4>

end

Where:

<index_int> is the index number, such as 1, of the route in the list of static routes
<gateway_ipv4> is the IP address of the gateway router

To log on to the FortiMail VM web UI

When you successfully configure administrative access, the web-based manager login dialog may appear automatically if you have a browser open.

If not, open a browser and enter the IP address of the virtual interface your set in Step 5 and include /admin with the URL; for example:

https://192.168.1.99/admin

FortiMail VM start-up settings:

Web-based administrator URL	https://<virtual-ipaddress>/admin
Administrator account	admin
Administrator password	none
Management access	HTTPS, SSH, ping
Operation mode	gateway mode
Webmail URL	https://<virtual-ipaddress>

If you are connecting to FortiMail VM with a trial license or a LENC version of FortiMail, you may not be able to see the logon page due to an SSL cipher error during the connection. In this case, you must configure the FortiMail interface to allow HTTP connections and access it with HTTP only.

config system interface

edit port1

set allowaccess http

end

On the logon page, in Name, enter admin.
Skip the Password field (until you assign the admin a password later).
Click Logon.

The FortiMail web-based manager opens at the dashboard. Notice the VM status in the License Information widget.

Installing the license

If you have a FortiMail VM license (for details, see Licensing), you can install it now after you start up FortiMail VM.

To install the license

In the License Information widget on the FortiMail VM web-based manager, click the Update link to the right of VM.
Locate and select the license file (.lic) you downloaded earlier from Fortinet.
Click Open.

A message box appears stating your license is being authenticated. This may take a few minutes.

If you uploaded a valid license, a second message box will appear informing you that your license authenticated successfully.

Click OK on the message box.

The system will reload and log out.

Congratulations! You have successfully installed FortiMail VM and can now configure your virtual appliance.