Licensing in active passive cluster

[Netzer]

Hi there,

we plan to replace an old firewall cluster against an new one from PA. It will be an active-passive cluster of 2 PA-850 boxes, we plan to use threat prevention + dns security license.

There is only one box active, the other one is on standby.

Is it enough to have the licenses only for the active system, or do we need a license for the passive system as well?

[TomYoung · Accepted solution]

Hello @Netzer ,

You need separate licenses for each firewall.  The excerpt below is from this URL -> https://docs.paloaltonetworks.com/pan-os/9-0/pan-os-admin/high-availability/set-up-activepassive-ha/....

The same set of licenses

—Licenses are unique to each firewall and cannot be shared between the firewalls. Therefore, you must license both firewalls identically. If both firewalls do not have an identical set of licenses, they cannot synchronize configuration information and maintain parity for a seamless failover.

However, you can order the HA license SKUs which will save you a little $.

Thanks,

Tom