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I'm evaluating whether to get a SonicWall TZ or a comparable Fortinet firewall. One thing i can't find but would really like to have is the ability to automate backing up the firewall configuration.

Is there a (preferably simple) way to fetch the running configuration from a SonicWall using scriptable command line-fu, utilising secure transport like ssh or scp?

Also, can the retrieved file be edited and uploaded to a TZ to reconfigure the firewall?

Both tricks seem to be doable on a Fortinet firewall.

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Sonicwall export files are compiled , thus is not possible to edit them offline and reupload to a different appliace.

There is a way to fetch config files , I never tried, but on stackoverflow there was a discussion on it, with an example script.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14147473/shell-script-to-automate-sonicwall-firewall-ssh-session-not-working

I have no experience on Fortinet , sorry...

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  • Thanks for the pointer! Using expect seems a bit kludgy to me, and evidently also to the poster at StackOverflow... Seems like i may have to go with the Fortigate, which has scp support and plain text configuration files.
    – llaurén
    Nov 12, 2015 at 9:17
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    The newer SonicOS 6.0 has a more robust CLI that may offer the ability to save the config in an editable way (that could then be uploaded to a similar device with minor edits -- if you were rolling them out for example) but I've not tried it. FortiNet devices do have a CLI interface with full config that can be used to reconfigure a similar device. SonicWALL's answer for what you want to do would probably be "use SonicWALL GMS (a global management system)" -- though that is fairly pricey.
    – PSaul
    Nov 13, 2015 at 2:22
  • Indeed GMS is pricey but for larger deployment is very robust and reliable. In SonicOS 6.x export config. files are compiled as in Sonic OS5x .
    – RobertoP
    Nov 13, 2015 at 9:30

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