Fortinet Is Making A Push For Cameras And VMS To IT Departments

Michael, thanks, we had a 2019 discussion on Fortinet. That's not sufficient so we will have someone investigate it deeper and do a post in the next 2 weeks. Thanks for raising this.

FortiRecorder - NVR - Fortinet (Licensed)

FortiRecorder Central aka FortiCentral - VMS - Fortinet (Free)

FortiCamera - Mix of manufacturers. Milesight, Dynacolor, Vivotek, Shenzhen YCX Electronics.

NVR comes in hardware and VM appliance. We only use the VM in production (have a couple of hardware units for testing). Simple licensing and a limit of 1000 cameras for each VM. 1U hardware appliance is limited to 64 cameras.

No GPU support for encoding or image processing / analysis. So be ready to throw plenty of CPU cores at the VM.

Licensing:

Hardware appliances do not require licenses as long as you use a Fortinet camera.

VM is licensed in packs of 10, 50 and 100 and are perpetual.

"Third party camera license" / ONVIF license available in packs of 1, 5, 10 and 20.

FortiCare - Warranty and support. Not mandatory, but highly recommended. Gives you access to firmware and Fortinet TAC.

There is also talk about a cloud model on the horizon. Supposedly sometime this year.