: VM-Series System Requirements
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VM-Series System Requirements

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VM-Series System Requirements

System Requirements for VM-Series models (fixed vCPUs).
Each instance of the VM-Series firewall requires a minimum resource allocation—number of CPUs, memory, and disk space, on its host server. Use the table below to verify that you allocate the necessary hardware resources for your VM-Series model or memory profile.
PAN-OS 11.0 adds additional feature and capabilities hence needs a little more memory. To provide the same session scale as a pre-PAN-OS 10.2 release, you need to increase the minimum memory allocation. In the case where you do not increase the minimum memory from pre-PAN-OS 11.0 configurations, the max session scale is reduced.
VM-Series Model
Supported Hypervisors
Supported VCPUs
Minimum Memory
Minimum Memory with GTP Enabled
Minimum Hard Drive
Maximum (Legacy) Session Count
Scaled Session in PAN-OS 10.2*
Recommended Memory for Legacy Session Count
VM-50
ESXi, Hyper-V, KVM
2
  • 5.5GB
  • 4.5GB in Lite mode
  • 6GB
  • 5GB in Lite mode
32GB (60GB at boot)
  • 65,000
  • 50,000 in Lite mode
  • 50,000
  • 25,000 in Lite mode
  • 6GB
  • 5.5GB
VM-100
AWS, Azure, ESXi, Google Cloud Platform, Hyper-V, KVM, OCI, Alibaba Cloud, Cisco ACI, Cisco CSP, Cisco ENCS, NSX-T (VM-100)
The VM-100 on Azure requires 4 vCPUs.
2
6.5GB
7.5GB
60GB
250,000
200,000
7GB
VM-300
AWS, Azure, ESXi, Google Cloud Platform, Hyper-V, KVM, OCI, Alibaba Cloud, Cisco ACI, Cisco CSP, Cisco ENCS, NSX-T (VM-300)
2, 4
9GB**
10GB
60GB
800,000
600,000
10GB
VM-500
AWS, Azure, Cisco ACI, Cisco CSP, ESXi, Google Cloud Platform, Hyper-V, KVM, OCI, NSX-T
2, 4, 8
16GB
20GB
60GB
2,000,000
1,800,000
18GB
VM-700
AWS, Azure, ESXi, Google Cloud Platform, Hyper-V, KVM, OCI, Alibaba Cloud, Cisco ACI, Cisco CSP, NSX-T
2, 4, 8, 16
56GB
64GB
60GB
10,000,000
10,000,000
56GB
*Fixed model VM-Series firewalls with licenses funded by Software NGFW Credits.
**In PAN-OS 10.2, 9GB might be insufficient depending upon the feature set or combination of feature sets (such as GTP or high-performance features) used on the firewall. If you experience memory resource related issues, increase memory to 11GB to accommodate the additional memory requirements of some of the features or combination of features.
You can enable Lite mode on the VM-50. Lite mode is an alternative operating mode for environments where resources are limited. See VM-50 Lite Mode for more information.
To achieve the best performance, all of the needed cores should be available on a single CPU socket.
For operation, the VM-50 firewall requires minimum 32GB of hard drive space. However, because the VM-Series base image is common to all models, you must allocate 60GB of hard drive space until you license the VM-50.
The number of vCPUs assigned to the management plane and those assigned to the dataplane differs depending on the total number of vCPUs assigned to the VM-Series firewall. If you assign more vCPUs than those officially supported by the license, any additional vCPUs are assigned to the management plane.
Total vCPUs
Management Plane vCPUs
Dataplane vCPUs
2
1
1
4
2
2
8
2
6
16
4
12

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