: PA-7000 Series Firewall Switch Management Cards (SMCs)
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PA-7000 Series Firewall Switch Management Cards (SMCs)

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PA-7000 Series Firewall Switch Management Cards (SMCs)

The PA-7000 Series Switch Management Card (SMC) provides: switch fabric management for the chassis, system management access, stores PAN-OS, the firewall configuration, and management logs. It also includes ports for high availability (HA) connectivity and LED indicators that provides status of the chassis components.
There are two SMC models: the first-generation SMC (PA-7050-SMC and PA-7080-SMC) and the second-generation SMC (PA-7050-SMC-B and PA-7080-SMC-B). The SMC is supported on PAN-OS versions up to PAN-OS 10.1. The SMC-B is supported on PAN-OS 9.0 and later versions. The second-generation SMC-B provides higher performance, a micro USB management port, redundant management ports, and redundant system drives.
The PA-7050 SMCs and PA-7080 SMCs are not interchangeable. Although the cards are similar, their back plane connectors and software are different. The hardware is also keyed in such a way that you cannot install a PA-7050 SMC in a PA-7080 firewall and vice versa.
A first-generation SMC (PA-7050-SMC or PA-7080-SMC) must be paired with a first-generation logging card (PA-7000-LPC). Similarly, a second-generation SMC (PA-7050-SMC-B or PA-7080-SMC-B) must be paired with a second-generation logging card (PA-7000-LFC-A).
When using PA-7000 Series firewalls in a High Availability (HA) pair, both firewalls must have SMCs of the same generation installed.
Use the following topics to learn about requirements, descriptions of the SMC components, and how to interpret the LEDs.