Technical Tip: FortiGate-VMs in Microsoft Azure using Generation 1 vs Generation 2 VMs

Description

This article describes the support for Generation 1 (Gen1) and Generation 2 (Gen2) VMs for FortiGate VMs.

Microsoft is migrating its datacenters to its new Azure Boost hardware platform, which offers improved performance and density for the same hardware surface.

Instance types Dv6 and above only support Gen2 VMs and MANA network drivers. Instance types Dv5 and below offer support for Gen1 and Gen2 VMs. Microsoft is currently migrating all Azure Boost hosts to MANA.

Scope

FortiGate-VM on Microsoft Azure.

Solution

Similar to Hyper-V, Microsoft offers 2 VM generations.

Generation 1 VMs: Legacy BIOS (PCAT) supporting IDE Disk controllers.

Generation 2 VMs: UEFI-based boot architecture and support for SCSI-based disk controllers offering larger than 2TB OS disks.

Using Azure Marketplace deployments and ARM templates provided in GitHub, the following are supported for deployment:

• FortiGate v7.4 and below: Generation 1 VM.

• FortiGate v7.6 and above: Generation 2 VM.

Users can upgrade the current FortiGate v7.4 VMs to v7.6 and above on Generation 1 VM instance types. Microsoft is moving towards Generation 2 VMs and Azure Boost.

Currently, there is no upgrade path from Generation 1 to Generation 2 VM instances; Microsoft only offers this for specific Windows and Linux images. The instance would need to be redeployed, and a backup and license would need to be reapplied.

Related documents:

• Support for Generation 2 VMs on Azure

• MANA support for Network Virtual Appliances (NVAs)

• Technical Tip: FortiGate-VMs in Microsoft Azure running on MANA (Microsoft Azure Network Adapter) enabled hosts