Preparing for deployment

This documentation assumes that before deploying the FortiGate-VM on the Xen virtual platform, you have addressed the following requirements:

Virtual environment

You have installed the Xen software on a physical server with sufficient resources to support the FortiGate-VM and all other VMs deployed on the platform.

If you configure the FortiGate-VM to operate in transparent mode, or include it in a FortiGate clustering protocol (FGCP) high availability (HA) cluster, configure any virtual switches to support the FortiGate-VM's operation before you create the FortiGate-VM.

Management software

If you plan to use the GUI to manage the Xen server, make sure that the appropriate management software for the platform is installed:

Platform	Management software
Open Xen	Virtual Machine Manager
Citrix Xen Server	XenCenter

Connectivity

The FortiGate-VM requires an Internet connection to contact FortiGuard to validate its license. If the FortiGate-VM is in a closed environment, it must be able to connect to a FortiManager to validate the FortiGate-VM license. See Validating the FortiGate-VM license with FortiManager.