Chapter 15 Unified Threat Management for FortiOS 5.0 : Other Security Profiles considerations : Conserve mode
  
Conserve mode
FortiGate units perform all Security Profiles processing in physical RAM. Since each model has a limited amount of memory, conserve mode is activated when the remaining free memory is nearly exhausted or the AV proxy has reached the maximum number of sessions it can service. While conserve mode is active, the AV proxy does not accept new sessions.