Fortinet integrates virtual cloud firewall with NVIDIA

Fortinet has announced an integrated solution featuring FortiGate VM, Fortinet’s virtual cloud firewall, running directly on the NVIDIA BlueField-3 data processing unit (DPU).

This integration embeds networking and brings isolated infrastructure acceleration into the AI Factory, allowing core security functions to run on BlueField instead of the host.

By moving protection into the data centre infrastructure itself, the solution aims to help enterprises secure high-performance private cloud and AI environments without slowing critical workloads.

Powered by the FortiOS operating system, FortiGate VM delivers firewall capabilities that secures hybrid, multi-cloud, and now AI factories, with security policies and centralised visibility and management.

Integrating FortiGate VM on NVIDIA BlueField allows organisations to offload core security functions, including firewalling, segmentation, and zero-trust controls from the host CPU to the DPU.

BlueField offloads networking and security functions in an isolated trust domain, purpose-built for isolating the security plane from compute workloads.

Security is implemented at the hardware level, yet software defined, while BlueField anchors firewall and segmentation at the network-fabric level.

Fortinet COO John Whittle said as enterprises are modernising their data centres to support AI, private cloud and edge applications require much higher throughput than traditional workloads.

"Integrating FortiGate VM on BlueField-3 DPU gives customers a practical way to keep security aligned with these new performance demands," he said.

"By moving firewalling, segmentation, and zero-trust controls on the DPU, Fortinet helps organisations improve isolation, reduce latency, and simplify consistent policy enforcement across their environments.” 

NVIDIA's SVP of networking, Kevin Deierling, said AI factories demand an entirely new class of secure, accelerated infrastructure.

"By running FortiGate VM directly on NVIDIA BlueField-3 DPUs, we’re extending the model of infrastructure-offloaded services to include advanced security," he said.

"This collaboration allows organisations to enforce firewalling, segmentation, and zero-trust policies at line rate, without impacting GPU workloads. Together with Fortinet, NVIDIA is delivering the secure, high-performance fabric customers need to build and scale their AI-powered data centres with confidence.”

The FortiGate VM on NVIDIA BlueField solution is supported starting with FortiOS 7.6.3.