NSX-V, VMware's Networking and Security platform designed for the software-defined data center (SDDC), offers the ability to deploy the Palo Alto Networks firewall as a service on a cluster of ESXi servers. The term SDDC is a VMware term that refers to a data center where infrastructure—compute resources, network and storage—is virtualized using VMware NSX-V.

To keep pace with the changes in the agile SDDC, the VM-Series firewall for NSX-V simplifies the process of deploying a Palo Alto Networks next-generation firewall and continually enforcing security and compliance for the east-west traffic in the SDDC. For details on the VM-Series for NSX-V, see the following topics: