Logging heavily to the local disk can slow down the system. Use a Premium SSD for the OS and log disks to prevent "wait" states on the CPU. Sizing Tier Guide Recommended Azure Size vCPU / RAM Small Office / Lab Standard_F2s_v2 Mid-Sized Enterprise Standard_F4s_v2 High Performance / Hub Standard_F8s_v2 Data Center Edge Standard_F16s_v2 Licensing Considerations Your Azure VM size must align with your FortiGate license.
Fortinet offers two licensing models in Azure: and Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) via the Azure Marketplace. BYOL License Tiers
2024 Standards Scope: Infrastructure Architects, Security Engineers, Cloud Administrators fortigate vm sizing azure
The D-series offers a balanced ratio of CPU to memory. This series is ideal if you maintain massive routing tables, large numbers of concurrent VPN tunnels, or require a larger buffer against Conserve Mode.
To properly size your FortiGate-VM, you need to understand the key performance numbers provided in the official FortiGate VM datasheet: Logging heavily to the local disk can slow down the system
Full Application Control, IPS, and Antivirus combined. Requires high CPU.
If using the FortiGate as a VPN hub (Site-to-Site or Client VPN), you must account for encryption overhead. Fortinet offers two licensing models in Azure: and
Includes Application Control and IPS. This typically performs at 25-40% of the base firewall speed.
Accelerated Networking bypasses the Azure host hypervisor and channels network traffic directly to the physical NIC of the Azure blade using Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV).
Based on the guidelines above, you would need a: