Breakout Port support introduces a new interface type for PA-7500 series firewalls in Strata Cloud Manager that allows you to split high-speed ethernet ports into multiple lower-speed connections. This feature addresses network deployment scenarios where you need to maximize port density or require more physical connections than the base port configuration provides. Instead of using a single high-speed port for one connection, you can break it out into multiple ports to accommodate more devices or create dedicated connections for specific network segments. This capability eliminates the need for external media converters or additional switching infrastructure when you need to connect multiple lower-speed devices to your PA-7500 platform.

You can configure ethernet ports as breakout type interfaces at the device scope, which enables you to create individual broken-out ports that function as standard ethernet interfaces. The broken-out ports support all existing interface types including layer 2, layer 3, virtual wire, and tap configurations, and you can create sub-interfaces from these ports as needed. The feature includes variable creation support for breakout interfaces at the firewall device level, enabling flexible port assignments across your network configuration. Validation mechanisms ensure proper port assignments and prevent configuration conflicts between parent breakout interfaces and their associated broken-out ports. When you set an interface to breakout type, you cannot create sub-interfaces directly from the parent interface, but you can create them from the individual broken-out ports once they are configured.