Fortigate Vm Sizing Azure Official
If using the FortiGate as a VPN hub (Site-to-Site or Client VPN), you must account for encryption overhead.
: Expect a brief period of downtime during the restart.
If you use Bring Your Own License (BYOL) , you can upgrade from a VM-01S to a VM-02S and then resize the Azure VM to match the new vCPU count within minutes. 3. Critical Sizing Constraints
High compute performance per dollar, excellent for heavy SSL inspection and IPS.
~100 Mbps throughput, basic firewall, some IPS. Solution: FG-VM01 + Standard_D2s_v5 . fortigate vm sizing azure
Larger VM sizes generally support higher network bandwidth. For example, some older v2 instances surprisingly support higher throughput (up to 1500 Mbps) compared to certain v4 variants (800 Mbps) due to Azure's internal throttling policies. RAM Usage: Aim for at least 4GB to 8GB
A standard enterprise FortiGate deployment often requires at least 4 NICs: Management, Untrust (External), Trust (Internal), and HA/Heartbeat.
Deploying a FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW) in Microsoft Azure is a best practice for securing hybrid and cloud-native workloads. However, unlike on-premises appliances where you buy fixed hardware, Azure offers a dizzying array of VM sizes. Choosing the wrong size leads to either poor performance (packet drops, high latency) or unnecessary cloud spend.
Different Azure series are optimized for specific firewall workloads: If using the FortiGate as a VPN hub
Fortinet supports several Azure VM types, but certain families are highly optimized for network virtual appliances (NVAs). The F-Series (Compute-Optimized) — Highly Recommended
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| Azure Instance Type | vCPU | Max NICs | Recommended BYOL License | |---|---|---|---| | Standard_F2 | 2 | 2 | FG-VM02 | | Standard_F4 | 4 | 4 | FG-VM04 | | Standard_F8 | 8 | 8 | FG-VM08 | | Standard_F16 | 16 | 8 | FG-VM16 | | Standard_F2s_v2 | 2 | 2 | FG-VM02 | | Standard_F4s_v2 | 4 | 2 | FG-VM04 | | Standard_F8s_v2 | 8 | 4 | FG-VM08 | | Standard_F16s_v2 | 16 | 4 | FG-VM16 | | Standard_F32s_v2 | 32 | 8 | FG-VM32 | | Standard_F64s_v2 | 64 | 8 | FG-VMUL | | Standard_F72s_v2 | 72 | 8 | FG-VMUL |
by default, which is essential for low-latency traffic processing. F-Series (Compute Optimized): Solution: FG-VM01 + Standard_D2s_v5
According to the latest FortiGate VM on Microsoft Azure Data Sheet, is mandatory for peak performance. Scenario A: Small Branch Office (Low Intensity)
For massive enterprise datacenters or environments handling millions of concurrent sessions, the E-series provides massive memory footprints.
This approach ensures that your FortiGate firewall in the cloud not only meets your current performance needs but is also positioned to scale with your business. Whether you are running a small remote office VPN, a multi-region enterprise hub, or a dynamic autoscaling environment, the principles outlined in this guide will help you optimize your FortiGate-VM for success on the Azure platform.
Without it, you lose SR-IOV, and throughput drops by >70%.
Cost-efficient high performance for specific modern workloads. Requires specific ARM64 FortiOS images. 3. Licensing vs. Azure Sizing
