PAN OS 8.1 support after March 1st 2022

[Ben-Price]

Hi All,

I see that support for PAN OS 8.1 will end on March 1st 2022 for some Palo Alto platforms. On other Palo Alto platforms, PA-200, PA-500, PA-5000 series and M-100, support for PAN OS 8.1 will continue until their respective hardware EOL dates e.g., 23 October 2023 for the PA-500.

I just wanted to double check, that all aspects of PAN OS 8.1 will be supported on these platforms until their respective hardware EOL date e.g., if a vulnerability is found in PAN OS 8.1.21 on a PA-500 this will be patched in a new version of PAN OS 8.1.x, bug fixes will be resolved, dynamic updates pushed etc.?

Referencing the below docs here:

https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/services/support/end-of-life-announcements/hardware-end-of-life-dat...

https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/services/support/end-of-life-announcements/end-of-life-summary

Thanks in advance.

[Ben-Price]

@BPry Can you confirm?

[BPry · Accepted solution]

@Ben-Price,

PAN-OS 8.1 on the PA-500 will continue to receive updates to address any security issues identified in the release until October 31st 2023 when the device officially goes end of life. You'll continue to receive the same dynamic updates as long as you have the subscriptions active on the device just like normal.

The only caveat that I would say for that is that as releases get older they don't always make the cut for things like new App-IDs and so on. We've also seen instances where older releases only received modified vulnerability signatures due to running out of IDs. While I don't expect that with PAN-OS 8.1, it's possible you could potentially run into that again. 

I would personally really recommend prioritizing the replacement of this hardware at this point to something newer, but if it has to remain for whatever reason it'll continue to be supported until the End of Life on October 31st 2023.