Deploying autoscaling on Azure

You can deploy FortiGate virtual machines (VMs) to support autoscaling on Azure. New resources are created or existing resources are used when specified during the deployment. By integrating FortiAnalyzer, you can consolidate logging and reporting for your FortiGate cluster. Fortinet provides a FortiGate Autoscale for Azure deployment package to facilitate the deployment.

Multiple FortiGate-VM instances form Virtual Machine Scale Sets (VMSS) to provide highly efficient clustering at times of high workloads. FortiGate Autoscale for Azure incorporates one or more VMSS, network related components, and Azure Function App scripts. FortiGate-VM instances are scaled out automatically according to predefined workload levels. When a spike in traffic occurs, FortiGate-VM instances are automatically added to the VMSS. Autoscaling is achieved by using FortiGate-native high availability (HA) features such as config-sync, which synchronizes operating system (OS) configurations across multiple FortiGate-VM instances at the time of scale-out events.

FortiGate Autoscale for Azure is available with FortiOS 6.4.5, FortiOS 6.4.7, FortiOS 7.0.0, and FortiOS 7.0.1 and supports any combination of On-Demand (PAYG) and Bring Your Own License (BYOL) instances.

FortiAnalyzer 6.2.5 or FortiAnalyzer 6.4.5 can be incorporated into Fortinet FortiGate Autoscale to use extended features that include storing logs into FortiAnalyzer.