The Advanced Routing Engine (ARE) is supported on Palo Alto Networks firewalls that utilize the PAN-OS 11.0+ software and have the required hardware architecture. The supported models include PA-3200 Series, PA-5400 Series, PA-800 Series, and PA-400 Series. These models provide enhanced routing capabilities, including BGP, OSPF, and more complex routing policies. PA-3260 and PA-5410 are part of the PA-3200 and PA-5400 Series, which are known to support ARE. PA-850 and PA-460 are within the PA-800 and PA-400 Series, which also support ARE

Separate rules must be created for each direction: Palo Alto Networks firewalls enforce security policies based on traffic direction. To allow bidirectional communication through the IPSec tunnel, two separate rules are required - one for incoming and one for outgoing traffic. IKE negotiation and IPSec/ESP packets are denied by default: Palo Alto Networks firewalls use an interzone default deny policy, meaning that unless an explicit policy allows IKE (UDP 500/4500) and ESP (protocol 50) traffic, the firewall will block these packets, preventing tunnel establishment. Therefore, administrators must create explicit rules permitting IKE and IPSec/ESP traffic to the firewall's external interface.

To meet the company's requirements - minimizing changes to the cloud environments, optimizing compute resources, and unifying security policies - the best approach is to deploy Cloud NGFW solutions natively for AWS and Azure while managing policies centrally with Panorama. In Azure, using Cloud NGFW for Azure deployed within vNETs allows traffic to be routed through security appliances efficiently without requiring a complete re-architecture. This approach aligns with Azure's existing routing mechanism while maintaining security. In AWS, deploying Cloud NGFW for AWS in a centralized Security VPC and integrating it with AWS Transit Gateway enables traffic inspection for all connected VPCs without modifying individual workloads. This method ensures efficient scaling and minimal infrastructure changes while maintaining security consistency.

By default, the Autonomous Digital Experience Manager (ADEM) traffic is configured to use the management interface in a Palo Alto Networks firewall. The management interface is typically used for management-related traffic, such as monitoring and logging, and it is configured to handle ADEMrelated traffic for the optimal performance of digital experience monitoring features. This default configuration helps ensure that ADEM traffic does not interfere with regular traffic that may traverse other interfaces, such as traffic from security zones or IPSec tunnels.

Terraform is an Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) tool that automates the provisioning and management of infrastructure resources, including Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls (NGFWs). By using Terraform configuration files, administrators can define and deploy NGFW instances across cloud environments (such as AWS, Azure, and GCP) efficiently and consistently. Terraform enables: Automated firewall deployment in cloud environments. Configuration of security policies and networking settings in a declarative manner. Scalability and repeatability, reducing manual intervention in firewall provisioning.