Flex licensing provides flexibility in how you consume Palo Alto Networks firewall capabilities, especially in cloud environments:
A. Licensing additional memory resources to increase session capacity: Flex licensing primarily focuses on CPU cores and does not directly license memory resources. Memory is tied to the instance size you select in the cloud provider.
B. Licensing Strata Cloud Manager, Panorama with Dedicated Log Collectors, and CDSS per deployment profile: Strata Cloud Manager, Panorama, and CDSS are licensed separately and are not part of the flex licensing model for VM-Series.
C. Using a pool of credits for both CN-Series firewall and VM-Series firewall deployment profiles: This is a key benefit of flex licensing. You can use a shared pool of credits to deploy both CN-Series (containerized) and VM-Series (virtual machine) firewalls, providing flexibility in your deployment strategy.
D. Moving credits between public and private cloud VM-Series firewall deployments: This is another significant advantage. Flex licensing allows you to transfer credits between public cloud (AWS, Azure, GCP) and private cloud VM-Series deployments, optimizing resource utilization and cost.
E. Vertically scaling the number of licensed cores in an existing fixed deployment profile: Flex licensing allows you to dynamically adjust the number of licensed cores for your VM-Series firewalls. This vertical scaling enables you to meet changing performance demands without needing to redeploy or reconfigure your firewalls significantly.
References:
Palo Alto Networks Flex Licensing documentation: Search for "Flex Licensing" on the Palo Alto Networks support portal. This documentation provides detailed information about the flex licensing model, including the benefits and use cases.
This documentation confirms that sharing credits between CN-Series and VM-Series, moving credits between public and private clouds, and vertically scaling licensed cores are core benefits of flex licensing.
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