FortiGate VM is Fortinets next-generation firewall delivered as a virtual appliance for cloud and virtualized environments. It brings the full FortiOS feature set and FortiGuard security services into AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and major hypervisors, giving you consistent policy enforcement, visibility, and centralized management across hybrid infrastructure.
FortiGate VM consolidates firewalling, IPS, malware protection, web/DNS security, segmentation, and VPN into one platformhelping reduce tool sprawl while improving threat response. It also supports rapid deployment and automation via infrastructure-as-code tooling (Terraform, CloudFormation, Ansible) and REST APIs, making it ideal for scalable cloud security architectures and security-as-code workflows.
Built for performance in software, FortiGate-VM can leverage advanced virtual Security Processing Units (vSPUs) to increase throughput by offloading packet processing to user space with kernel-bypass techniques. It also supports Intel QuickAssist Technology (Intel QAT) to accelerate IPsec VPN performance, improving throughput significantly depending on packet size.
Common deployments include NGFW protection for VPC/VNET workloads, high-performance SSL inspection (including TLS 1.3), segmentation for multi-tenant or multi-app environments, and VPN gateway use cases such as site-to-site IPsec, VPC-to-VPC connectivity, and remote access VPN.
VM sizing options (FortiGate-VM S-Series) scale from 1 vCPU to unlimited, with consistent feature coverage across models:
-
VM-01S: 1 vCPU (min/max 1/1), 10,000 policies, 210 VDOMs
-
VM-02S: up to 2 vCPU, 10,000 policies, 225 VDOMs
-
VM-04S: up to 4 vCPU, 10,000 policies, 250 VDOMs
-
VM-08S: up to 8 vCPU, 200,000 policies, 2500 VDOMs
-
VM-16S: up to 16 vCPU, 200,000 policies, 2500 VDOMs
-
VM-32S: up to 32 vCPU, 200,000 policies, 2500 VDOMs
-
VM-ULS: unlimited vCPU, 200,000 policies, 2500 VDOMs
All S-Series models list 32GB2TB storage support, up to 20,000 registered endpoints, and scale to 300 FortiSwitches (model dependent). Multi-VDOM is not included by default for S-Series and can be added via a separate VDOM subscription license (seat-based: each seat = 5 VDOMs, up to 500 total).
FortiGate VM is supported across major virtualization and cloud platforms, including VMware ESXi/NSX-T, Hyper-V, KVM, Nutanix AHV, Azure/AzureStack, AWS (including GovCloud), Google Cloud, Oracle OCI, Alibaba Cloud, and IBM Cloud (support varies by FortiOS release).
Licensing is available as annual subscription SKUs aligned to vCPU tiers (VM01-S through VMUL-S), and FortiGate VM purchased through cloud marketplaces typically includes the UTP bundle.