Fortinet and Arista Networks Announce Joint Secure AI Data Center Solution

Fortinet announced the Fortinet Secure AI Data Center solution, built in close collaboration with leading technology partner Arista Networks, deployed at Monolithic Power Systems. This solution unites best-of-breed networking and security to deliver a validated, scalable, zero-trust architecture for the AI data center.

"AI infrastructure is advancing faster than most organizations can secure or operationalize it. By collaborating with industry leader Arista Networks, we’re delivering a secure AI data center architecture and integrated solution that brings security, performance, and operational simplicity together from day one. This alliance gives customers a validated blueprint to scale AI with confidence, without compromising protection or creating unnecessary complexity."

The collaboration expands upon the Secure AI Data Center solution introduced by Fortinet, now enhanced through multivendor integration to provide the blueprint for deploying and scaling AI infrastructure with guaranteed performance, operational resilience, and security. Key advantages of the multivendor architecture include:

By offloading HTTPS/TLS to Fortinet’s ASIC, delivering up to 33x performance with sub-single-microsecond latency, server CPUs are freed from compute- and cache-heavy crypto, reserving cores and memory bandwidth for forward passes and token sampling. This cuts networking contention, reduces latency and jitter, boosts tokens-per-second, and tightens tail latencies under load.

These capabilities ensure organizations can scale AI with higher confidence, lower total cost, and greater performance resiliency.

The collaboration delivers an integrated, scalable, and modular reference architecture designed to secure and accelerate every layer of the AI stack, from high-performance compute clusters and ultra-low-latency networking to storage, data pipelines, and LLM workloads.

The joint solution integrates:

This solution design delivers continuous end-to-end security and resilient, high-performance infrastructure to maximize uptime, eliminate data bottlenecks, streamline operations, and improve compute ROI.

AI projects face significant challenges, including skyrocketing infrastructure costs, vendor lock-in, performance bottlenecks, and security risks ranging from model tampering to data leakage. The secure AI data center reference architecture identifies architectural complexity and skill gaps as key reasons 95% of AI deployments fail.

The alliance directly addresses these barriers by providing:

This solution empowers organizations to scale AI confidently while reducing cost, complexity, and operational risk.

Through this joint effort, MPS has leveraged the Fortinet security ecosystem as a core foundation for securely building and consuming AI services across its global operations. MPS collaborates closely with Fortinet to design and operate an AI data center infrastructure that meets the performance and scale demands of modern, compute-intensive workloads. By co-developing and validating the architecture with Fortinet, MPS demonstrates how the Fortinet Secure AI Data Center solution can help organizations adopt an AI-ready infrastructure that is secure, scalable, and aligned with real-world deployment and operational requirements.

The solution further underscores the openness and collaborative capabilities of the Fortinet Security Fabric and the Fortinet Open Ecosystem, enabling integrated, automated solutions that converge advanced networking, security, and AI infrastructure. The solution leverages Fortinet Fabric-Ready technology partner Arista Networks to accelerate AI innovation.

“Arista Networks is a leader in data-driven AI networking solutions. Our collaboration with Fortinet brings together best-in-class cybersecurity with Arista’s ultra-low-latency, high-speed networking, which is essential for AI applications,” said Ed Chapman, Vice President of Business Development at Arista Networks. “We are delighted to accelerate the deployment of AI-driven data centers with this integrated offering.”

“AI is transforming every aspect of our business, from product design to supply chain management, while introducing new operational challenges,” said Huy Ly, Head of Global Infrastructure/Security at Monolithic Power Systems. “Leveraging the scalable, affordable, and high-performing reference architecture and integrated solution gives us the visibility, performance, and protection we need to operate high-density GPU clusters with confidence. With this solution integrated into our AI environment, we can safeguard sensitive models and data while maintaining hyperscale throughput with greater efficiency and cost performance.”

Source: Fortinet media announcement