Virtual Appliance Deployment

UserGate NGFW Virtual Appliance is a quick way to deploy a VM with pre-configured components. The VM image is supplied in the OVF format (Open Virtualization Format) supported by vendors such as VMWare and Oracle VirtualBox, as well as Qcow2 format for QEMU-KVM virtualization systems. For Microsoft Hyper-V, a VM disk image is supplied.

Note For the correct operation of the VM, 8GB RAM and 2-core virtual CPU are recommended as a minimum. Your hypervisor must support 64-bit operating systems.

To get started with the virtual appliance, follow these steps:

Name

Description

Step 1. Download and unpack the VM image.

Download the latest version of the virtual appliance from the official website, https://www.usergate.com.

Step 2. Import the VM image into your virtualization system.

Instructions on how to import a VM image can be found on the VirtualBox and VMWare websites. For Microsoft Hyper-V, you first need to create a VM, specify the downloaded VM image as the disk, and then disable Integration Services in the settings for the newly created VM.

Step 3. Configure the VM parameters.

Increase the size of the RAM for the VM. In the VM properties, set a minimum of 8GB and add 1GB for each 100 users.

Step 4. Important! Manually create an additional disk of the required size.

The default disk size is 100GB, which is usually not enough to store all logs and settings. In the VM properties, set a disk size of 200GB or more. The recommended size is 300GB or more.

For QEMU-KVM, the default system partition size is 8GB. At the first boot, the system will automatically detect the additional disk and expand its system partitions.

This command adds a 100GB disk to a QEMU-KVM system:

qemu-img create -f qcow2 -o preallocation=metadata,refcount_bits=16,lazy_refcounts=on,cluster_size=4K your-disk-name.qcow2 100G

Step 5. Configure virtual networks.

UserGate is supplied with four interfaces assigned to zones:

  • Management: the first VM interface.

  • Trusted: the second VM interface.

  • Untrusted: the third VM interface.

  • DMZ: the fourth VM interface.

Step 6. Perform factory reset.

Start the UserGate VM.

During loading, select Support Menu and then Factory reset. This is a critical step. UserGate uses this step to configure network adapters and increase the partition size on the hard disk to the full size specified at Step 4.