Follow this process before clicking “Deploy”:
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When sizing a FortiGate VM in Azure, you must evaluate three foundational pillars of throughput and capacity: Compute (vCPU and Memory)
Select a new VM instance type (e.g., moving from Standard_D2s_v5 to Standard_D4s_v5 ). Start the VM. fortigate vm sizing azure
For sizing a , the most critical factor is aligning your vCPU count with your Fortinet license (BYOL) or choosing an Azure instance family that maximizes throughput and network interface (NIC) support . Core Sizing Recommendations
Drastically reduces latency, minimizes jitter, and lowers CPU utilization by offloading packet switching from the host OS.
That means simply choosing the right BYOL license is not enough. You still need to provision a large enough Azure VM to meet your performance needs. The FortiGate-VM can't utilize vCPUs beyond its license, but it also can't exceed the network throughput and packet processing capacity of the underlying Azure VM. Can’t copy the link right now
Always choose a size that supports Azure Accelerated Networking (SR-IOV). This reduces latency and CPU overhead by bypassing the virtual switch.
The FortiGate-VM will boot and function normally. It will only use the number of vCPUs specified in your license for traffic processing. The remaining vCPUs in the Azure VM remain idle, but Azure continues to bill you for the full VM size . Properly right-sizing your Azure VM to match your licensed vCPU count is essential for cost efficiency.
FortiGate licensing in Azure directly affects what VM sizes you can deploy. Start the VM
FortiOS is highly optimized for multi-core processing. More vCPUs allow the firewall to distribute packet processing across multiple parallel workers.
There are two primary ways to license your FortiGate-VM, and each impacts how you size the underlying VM: FortiGate VM on Microsoft Azure Data Sheet - Fortinet