2021 Year In Review: VM-Series and CN-Series

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See how to get the most out of what we’ve accomplished with VM-Series virtual firewalls and CN-Series container firewalls this year.

As you hopefully prepare to take time off for the holidays and recharge for the new year, it’s helpful to look back at how the year unfolded. That’s why we thought it would be good to review not just recent developments, but also some major milestones we’ve achieved for our customers in 2021 with VM-Series virtual firewalls and CN-Series container firewalls. 

Check out these 2021 highlights: 

Forrester Consulting Discovered 115% ROI with VM-Series Firewalls

As it turns out, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series virtual firewalls pay for themselves. Get all the details about significant 115% return on investment (ROI) over three years with a six-month payback period in this Forrester Consulting study. You’ll discover how these virtualized instances of our ML-Powered Next-Generation Firewalls (NGFWs) provide savings measured in millions of dollars over a short period of time.

The Flexible Consumption Model Bypassed Traditional Licensing

We announced the industry’s most comprehensive and flexible firewall licensing and consumption model, which is based on the idea of easily sizing, procuring, and scaling  software-based firewalls in response to your immediate needs rather than on projected requirements. What’s more, we’ve recently launched an interactive tool so you can easily estimate software NGFW Ccedits and can more accurately figure out Palo Alto Networks firewall-as-a-platform components and services: VM-Series virtual firewalls, CN-Series container firewalls, any of our current and future Security subscriptions, virtual Panorama appliances for management, and, of course, log collection. 

Google Cloud Intrusion Detection System (IDS) Launched

This Cloud IDS network threat detection system is delivered as a cloud-native service built with industry-leading security technologies from Palo Alto Networks. Now available to all, Cloud IDS allows organizations to deploy the best-in-class network threat detection capability powered by Palo Alto Networks with the simplicity and scale of the Google Cloud native service.

Rapid Automated Firewall Deployment Introduced for AWS

Securing public cloud environments with VM-Series virtual firewalls has continued to get more simple and rapid with orchestrated deployment capabilities that are now extended to Amazon Web Services (AWS) with VM-Series NGFW Orchestration for AWS. Designed to save time and effort, this feature accelerates deployment time and simplifies the management, scaling, and monitoring of these virtual NGFWs. What’s more, this feature is meant to provide the thousands of enterprises that rely on VM-Series security in AWS with an even more seamless way to leverage deep network inspection, ML-powered threat prevention, and automated security workflows.

Easier VM-Series Deployment

You can use the security-centric workflow to control and manage your VM-Series firewalls for NSX-T using your Panorama hardware or virtual appliance. You don’t need to access NSX-T Manager to create service chains and steering rules (however, you must still create the service deployment from NSX-T Manager). Additionally, this capability speeds up the process with the autogeneration of redirect policy rules that are based on zones and autogeneration of rules based on Panorama policy rules—both of which you can then push to NSX-T Manager. Get the full details deploy the VM-Series using the security-centric workflow.

U.S. Government TAC Support Added for AWS and Azure PAYG Listings 

Another 2021 development is the ability for you to find our new VM-Series pay-as-you-go (PAYG) listings in AWS GovCloud and Azure Government marketplaces for our federal and public sector customers who require U.S. Government TAC support. 

Kubernetes Core-Based Licensing Made Available

You can now license CN-Series firewalls based on the total number of vCPUs (cores) used by CN-NGFW pods deployed in your Kubernetes environment. Plus, get details about activating credits, creating a CN-Series deployment profile, and managing those deployment profiles.

Added Ability to Secure Amazon EKS on Outposts with CN-Series Firewalls

Ensuring container security is critical for making the most of cloud-like capabilities across environments. That’s why we’re excited to announce support for Palo Alto Networks CN-Series container firewalls on Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) running within AWS Outposts for meaningful hybrid security.

By providing the flexibility to deploy, run, and scale Kubernetes applications across environments, EKS adds new capabilities for the fully managed AWS Outposts service, which offers the same AWS infrastructure, AWS services, APIs, and tools in virtually any datacenter, co-location space, and on-premises deployment. Our customers have already realized the power of running CN-Series NGFWs on EKS and with this added support for Outposts, they can now achieve the same fine-grained container traffic inspection where it’s most needed—at the networking edge or within their on-premises data centers.

VM-Series Virtual Firewalls Integrated with Azure Gateway Load Balancer 

Palo Alto Networks announced the integration of VM-Series virtual firewalls with Microsoft Azure Gateway Load Balancer (GWLB). This integration is designed to efficiently augment native Microsoft Azure network security capabilities with next-generation threat protection so that customers can more easily attain greater performance and scalability. Now available in beta, the integration is slated for general availability in the very near future.

And in more recent news: 

Deploy the CN-Series Firewall from the AWS Marketplace

You can now license your CN-Series firewall as a Kubernetes Service deployed on AWS EKS through the AWS Marketplace. You can license the CN-Series firewall for one month, one year, two years, or three years and deploy it on EKS 1.19 and later EKS versions or on Redhat Openshift 4.7 and later versions. Read the step-by-step details now.

Discover CN-Series Firewall Openshift Licensing on AWS  

It’s often in the details—particularly when those details provide more flexibility. That’s why we’re excited that you can now license your CN-Series firewall as a Kubernetes Service deployed on Redhat Openshift 4.7 and later versions. Find details about the CN-Series Deployment—Supported Environments.

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Get Ready for More in 2022

We’ve got even more advances in the queue for you and we think you’ll be delighted about how we’ll be providing more capabilities and more deployment ease for your VM-Series and CN-Series firewalls in 2022. We wish you the best of the holidays and a very happy and secure new year!