Fortinet FortiGate 1801F-DC FortiCare Premium to Elite Upgrade, 3-Year (FC-10-D18F1-204-02-36)

A FortiGate 1801F-DC already running FortiCare Premium can move to Elite-tier support for three years with the FortiGate 1801F-DC 3-Year Upgrade, FortiCare Premium to Elite (FC-10-D18F1-204-02-36). This is a licensing add-on, not a replacement plan: the unit needs an active FortiCare Premium subscription on file before the upgrade can be applied, and once it is, critical-issue response tightens to 15 minutes and the Elite device-insights portal becomes available for the full three years.

What the upgrade changes

The 1801F-DC’s existing FortiCare Premium license stays in place; this SKU stacks Elite-level service on top of it for three years:

• Faster response times: critical-issue response goes from Premium’s one hour down to 15 minutes, and non-critical response moves from next-business-day to two business hours.
• Elite device-insights portal: a consolidated monitoring dashboard with proactive health and posture recommendations, exclusive to the Elite tier.
• 18-month extended end-of-engineering-support (E-EoES): qualifying long-term-support (LTS) firmware builds get extra runway past the standard support window.
• RMA class unchanged: Elite does not upgrade the hardware RMA type. Both Premium and Elite ship Standard RMA with Advanced Replacement on the 1801F-DC; a separate Priority or Secure RMA add-on covers faster physical turnaround if that’s needed too.

Three years works well for teams that don’t want to touch the renewal every 12 months but also aren’t ready to commit to the full five-year term: it maps to a mid-length budget or hardware-review cycle for a DC-powered 1801F-DC deployment, which tends to sit in facilities (telco cabinets, industrial sites, data centers running on -48V DC plant) that plan refreshes on that kind of horizon.

FortiCare tier comparison

This upgrade shifts the FortiGate 1801F-DC from the Premium column below to the Elite column. Essential is included for reference as the baseline tier on FortiGate hardware:

Who upgrades from Premium to Elite

The 1801F-DC is a high-throughput chassis-class firewall, so it’s rarely sitting idle when it’s deployed: think core or data-center edge duty where a one-hour wait on a critical fault is already too long. Telecom, colocation, and industrial DC-power environments where the unit runs this model specifically for lend themselves to Elite’s 15-minute response and the proactive visibility of the device-insights portal. If the deployment can tolerate next-business-day turnaround on rare critical issues, staying on Premium and redirecting the budget elsewhere is the more practical call; if downtime on this unit has a direct cost, the three-year Elite upgrade closes that gap without an annual renewal chore.

Activation and delivery

Fortinet applies the upgrade electronically against the FortiGate 1801F-DC’s serial number, layering it on the existing FortiCare Premium registration already tied to that unit. Nothing ships and no site visit is involved. Once processed, the Elite response times and portal access are live for the full three-year term.

Buying from DataCenter360.ca

As an authorized Fortinet Select Partner, DataCenter360.ca fulfills this upgrade as a genuine electronic Fortinet license regardless of where the order is placed. If it isn’t clear whether the 1801F-DC’s current subscription qualifies, our team can confirm eligibility against the unit’s serial number before checkout, and the purchase itself goes through a fully secured cart.