Hi,
I am using Fortigate 200D Firmware v5.4.1,build1064 (GA)
Recently, there is the message when I log in “Conserve mode activated due to high memory usage” Memory Usage 85%
Could you help me fix this issue?
Thank you.
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Thank you for your support.
I try to upgrade firmware to 6.0.12 but can not download it from support.fortinet.com
There is the message when I select download image firmware.
“Sorry, you don’t have any product covered by Fortinet support contract.
Please contact Fortinet partners to purchase Fortinet support contract or Fortinet customer service team at cs@fortinet.com”
Yes, you have to have a valid Support Contract assigned to your username in Fortinet website to be able to download firmware images. And if you try to keep the configuration, you have to upgrade in specific steps, so would need to download quite a lot of firmware images:
We had an issue where our Fortigate was using “Conserve Mode” due to high memory usage. All outbound traffic was halted as a result. FW was running at about 90% at the time. Looking into this further we found multiple “wad” processes running.
After killing these instances the memory dropped down to ~50%.
Reading further into the WAD process it is used for ” cache, explicit-proxy and wan optimization.” Which we are only using SD-WAN with Performance SLA for outbound traffic load balancing & failover.
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Has anyone ran into this issue before?
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Any advise as to what we can do so this doesn’t happen again? We still need SD-WAN enabled.
I also found this Fortinet Forum post with people also seeing similar issues currently. https://forum.fortinet.com/tm.aspx?m=100000&mpage=2
“The system has entered conserve mode”
“Fortigate has reached connection limit for n seconds”
That is status field from the “Alert message control” on System Dashboard. that status indicates the critical level from FortiGate device if it has entered conserve mode.
This problem happens when shared memory goes over 80%, to exit this conserve mode you have to wait (or kill some of the processes) until the memory goes under 70%. A FortiGate goes into the conserve mode state as a self protection measure when a memory shortage appears on the system. When entering conserve mode the FortiGate activates protection measures in order to recover memory space. When enough memory is recovered, the system is leaving/exiting the conserve mode state and releases the protection measures.
Antivirus fail-open is a safeguard feature that determines the behavior of the FortiGate AntiVirus system, when it becomes overloaded with high traffic.
to mitigate this you have more type of options:
# set av-failopen { off | on-shot | pass | idledrop}
Below we will describe what all of them do:
a. Off – if the FortiGate enters conserve mode, the FortiGate will stop accepting new AV sessions, but will continue to process currently active sessions
b. One-shot – if the FortiGate enters conserve mode, all new connections will bypass the AV system, but currently sessions will continue to be processed. This is the same as the “pass” options, but it will NOT turn off once the condition causing the av-failopen has stopped
c. Idle-drop – will drop connection based on the clients that has the most opened connection
d. Pass – this is the default option
Please keep in mind that with one-shot and pass option, NO content filtering of the traffic is done. The data stream could contain malicious content.
Below are some commands to troubleshoot when the system enters conserve mode:
a. Check if the system is in Conserve Mode:
# diagnose hardware sysinfo shm
SHM counter: 67
SHM allocated: 1556480
SHM total: 101220352
conservemode: 0 [conservemode 0 means not in conserve mode, 1 means on conserve mode, 2 means on kernel conserve mode]
shm last entered: n/a
system last entered: n/a
SHM FS total: 106827776
SHM FS free: 105205760
SHM FS avail: 105205760
SHM FS alloc: 1622016
b. Check if there any errors on the interfaces:
#diagnose hardware deviceinfo nic
So, If this problem occurs somehow we need to reduce shared memory usage on Fortigate, some optimization which I have try to improve performance on this box is:
1. Session timer optimizations
# config system global
set tcp-halfclose-timer 30 [ default 120 s ]
set tcp-halfopen-timer 30 [ default 60 s ]
set tcp-timewait-timer 0 [ default 120 s ]
set udp-idle-timer 60 [ default 120 s ]
end
# config system session-ttl
set default 300 [ default 300 ]
config port
edit 0
set protocol 17
set timeout 10
set end-port 53
set start-port 53
end
end
2. Reduce the FortiGuard services for the cache
# config system fortiguard
set webfilter-cache-ttl 500 [ default 3600 ]
set antispam-cache-ttl 500 [ default 1800 ]
end
3. DNS cache optimization
# config system dns
set dns-cache-limit 300 [ default: 5000 ]
end
Optional:
3a. Disable options for DNS forwarding:
# config system dns
unset fwdintf
end
3b. Delete dns-udp session-helper:
# config system session-helper
delete 14 [ 14 is references number for dns-udp ]
end
4. Reduce memory caching in some features (Explicit proxy, FortiGuard Antispam/Webfiltering)
on FortiOS 5.0: System > Config > Features [ enable/disable ]
5. Turn off all non mandatory features such as Logging, archiving, data leak prevention, IPS
Display CPU/Memory usage:
# get system performance top <delay> <max_lines>
or
# diag sys top <delay> <max_lines>
And to kill process:
# diagnose sys kill 9
Restart any applications:
# diagnose test application <application> <option>
Restart IPS engine:
# diagnose test application ipsengine 99
6. Turn off DHCP-server services
# config sys dhcp server
delete (reference number for dhcp-server)
end
7. Reduce the maximum file size for antivirus scanning
On FortiOS 5.0: Go to Policy > Proxy Options > Common Options > Change: Amount (bytes)
On FortiOS 4.0: Go to Firewall > Policy > Protocol Options > reduce the file size threshold
If your firewall still entered conserve mode instead of still more RAM, replace with the higher model 😀
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Created OnSeptember 26, 2022
Last Updated OnSeptember 27, 2022
Description
By default, FortiOS will spawn as many IPS , WAD, AV and SSL-VPN processes as CPU cores available on a device. Since each process is consuming memory, and a memory size on an entry level firewall ( Fortigate 30-90e models , also F models ) is very limited, these processes can consume enough available memory to force Fortigate firewall in conserve mode due to a high memory usage.
We have observed this happening on firewalls running 6.4, 7.0 and 7.2 firmware.
The only workaround we were able to find is to limit amount of processes spawned by IPS , WAD and SSL-VPN engines
In a CLI prompt, run following commands
config system global
set miglogd-children 1
set sslvpn-max-worker-count 2
set wad-worker-count 2
set scanunit-count 2
end
config ips global
set engine-count 2
end
This will force FortiOS to lower number of processes for scan engines and you should see firewall going to a normal mode is a few minutes.
Please note that in HA cluster, you will need to run these commands on both primary and secondary device, since these settings are not replicated between cluster members.
This article is based on information from this Fortinet’s Knoweledge article .