: PA-7000 Series Firewall Data Processing Card (DPC)
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PA-7000 Series Firewall Data Processing Card (DPC)

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PA-7000 Series Firewall Data Processing Card (DPC)

Learn about the PA-7000 DPC
The PA-7000 Series Data Processing Card (PA-7000-DPC-A) is an optional interface card that can be installed to improve the processing capacity of the chassis. Similar in physical design to the PA-7000 100G NPC, the DPC offers scalability in the form of four additional data plane instances. As opposed to the PA-7000 100G NPC, the DPC does not have a network processor or a physical I/O; therefore, your firewall must have at least one or more PA-7000 Series Firewall Network Processing Cards (NPCs).
To install and enable a DPC in your chassis, your firewall must be on PAN-OS 10.0 or later. On the PA-7050 firewall, you can install DPCs in slots 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, or 7 and on the PA-7080 firewall, you can install DPCs in slots 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, or 12. Furthermore, because the DPC has no front panel ports, you must change the firewall’s session distribution policy from the default (ingress-slot).
It is recommended that you change the session distribution policy to session-load when installing the DPC.
The DPC is compatible with all PA-7050 and PA-7080 hardware, with the exception of the old PA-7050 fan tray. You must use the updated fan tray models (PA-7050-FANTRAY-L-A and PA-7050-FANTRAY-R-A, as well as the air filter, PA-7050-FLTR-A) to use the DPC.
To discern which generation fan trays your PA-7050 has, check the firewall serial number. If the last five digits of the serial number are numerically greater than 10,000, the PA-7050 was manufactured with the new fan trays and is compatible with the DPC. If the last five digits of the firewall serial number are numerically less than 10,000, then the PA-7050 was manufactured with the old fan trays. Pull the fan trays out to verify. If your PA-7050 has the old fan trays, you must Replace a PA-7050 Fan Tray in order to ensure full compatibility between the chassis and the DPC.
See the following topic to learn how to interpret the DPC LEDs.