The VM-Series firewall supports CPU oversubscription on all models. CPU oversubscription allows you deploy a higher density of VM-Series firewalls on hypervisors running on x86 architecture. You can deploy two (2:1) to five (5:1) VM-Series firewalls per required allocation of CPUs. When planning your deployment, use the following formula to calculate the number of VM-Series firewalls your hardware can support.

(Total CPUs x Oversub Ratio)/CPUs per firewall = total number of VM-Series firewalls

For example, at a 5:1 ratio, a host machine with 16 physical CPU and at least 180GB of memory (40 × 4.5GB) can support up to 40 instances to the VM-50. Each VM-50 requires two vCPUs and five VM-50s can be associated to each pair of vCPUs.

(16 CPUs x 5)/2 = 40 VM-50 firewalls

Beyond meeting the minimum VM-Series System Requirements, no additional configuration is required to take advantage of oversubscription. Deploy VM-Series firewalls normally and resource oversubscription occurs automatically. When planning your deployment, consider other functions, such as virtual switches, and guest machines on the host that require hardware resources of their own.