PA-5450

Highlights
• World’s first ML-Powered NGFW

PA-5450 • Eleven-time Leader in the Gartner Magic

Quadrant for Network Firewalls

The Palo Alto Networks PA-5450 ML-Powered Next- • Leader in The Forrester Wave: Enterprise
Generation Firewall (NGFW) platform is designed for Firewalls, Q4 2022
hyperscale data center, internet edge, and campus • Delivers 5G-Native Security built to
segmentation deployments. Delivering incredible safeguard service provider and enterprise
performance—189 Gbps of Threat Prevention throughput 5G transformation and multi-access edge
computing (MEC)
with security services enabled—it is based on a scalable,
modular design that enables you to increase performance • Extends visibility and security to all devices,
including unmanaged IoT devices, without
as your needs increase. The PA-5450 offers simplicity
the need to deploy additional sensors
defined by a single-system approach to management and
licensing. • Supports high availability with active/active
and active/passive modes

• Delivers predictable performance with

security services

• Supports centralized administration with

Panorama network security management

• Maximizes security investments and

prevents business disruptions with Strata™
Cloud Manager

Strata by Palo Alto Networks | PA-5450 | Datasheet 1

The world’s first ML-Powered NGFW enables you to prevent unknown threats, see, and s­ ecure
­everything—including the internet of things (IoT)—and reduce errors with automatic policy
­recommendations. The controlling element of the PA-5450 is PAN-OS®, the same software that runs
all Palo Alto Networks NGFWs. PAN-OS natively classifies all traffic, inclusive of applications, threats,
and content, and then ties that traffic to the user regardless of location or device type. The application,
content, and user—in other words, the elements that run your business—then serve as the basis of your
security policies, resulting in improved security posture and reduced incident response time.

Key Security and Connectivity Features

ML-Powered Next-Generation Firewall
• Embeds machine learning (ML) in the core of the firewall to provide inline signatureless attack
prevention for file-based attacks while identifying and immediately stopping never-before-seen
phishing attempts.
• Leverages cloud-based ML processes to push zero-delay signatures and instructions back to the NGFW.
• Uses behavioral analysis to detect IoT devices and make policy recommendations; cloud-delivered
and natively integrated service on the NGFW.
• Automates policy recommendations that save time and reduce the chance of human error.

Identifies and Categorizes All Applications, on All Ports, All the Time, with
Full Layer 7 Inspection
• Identifies the applications traversing your network irrespective of port, protocol, evasive techniques,
or encryption (TLS/SSL). In addition, it automatically discovers and controls new applications to
keep pace with the SaaS explosion with SaaS Security subscription.
• Uses the application, not the port, as the basis for all your safe enablement policy decisions: allow,
deny, schedule, inspect, and apply traffic-shaping.
• Offers the ability to create custom App-ID™ tags for proprietary applications or request App-ID
­development for new applications from Palo Alto Networks.
• Identifies all payload data within the application (e.g., files and data patterns) to block malicious
files and thwart data exfiltration attempts.
• Creates standard and customized application usage reports, including software-as-a-service (SaaS)
reports that provide insight into all sanctioned and unsanctioned SaaS traffic on your network.
• Enables safe migration of legacy Layer 4 rule sets to App-ID-based rules with built-in Policy
­Optimizer, giving you a rule set that is more secure and easier to manage.
Check out the App-ID tech brief for more information.

Enforces Security for Users at Any Location, on Any Device, While

Adapting Policy Based on User Activity
• Enables visibility, security policies, reporting, and forensics based on users and groups—not just IP
addresses.
• Easily integrates with a wide range of repositories to leverage user information: wireless LAN
­controllers, VPNs, directory servers, SIEMs, proxies, and more.
• Allows you to define Dynamic User Groups (DUGs) on the firewall to take time-bound security
actions without waiting for changes to be applied to user directories.
• Applies consistent policies irrespective of users’ locations (office, home, travel, etc.) and devices
(iOS and Android mobile devices; macOS, Windows, and Linux desktops and laptops; Citrix and
Microsoft VDI; and terminal servers).

Strata by Palo Alto Networks | PA-5450 | Datasheet 2

 • Prevents corporate credentials from leaking to third-party websites and prevents reuse of stolen
credentials by enabling multifactor authentication (MFA) at the network layer for any application
without any application changes.
• Provides dynamic security actions based on user behavior to restrict suspicious or malicious users.
• Consistently authenticates and authorizes your users, regardless of location and where user identity
stores live, to move quickly toward a Zero Trust security posture with Cloud Identity Engine—an
­entirely new cloud-based architecture for identity-based security.
Check out the Cloud Identity Engine solution brief for more information.

Prevents Malicious Activity Concealed in Encrypted Traffic

• Inspects and applies policy to TLS/SSL-encrypted traffic, both inbound and outbound, including
for traffic that uses TLS 1.3 and HTTP/2.
• Offers rich visibility into TLS traffic, such as amount of encrypted traffic, TLS/SSL versions, cipher
suites, and more, without decrypting.
• Enables control over use of legacy TLS protocols, insecure ciphers, and misconfigured certificates
to mitigate risks.
• Facilitates easy deployment of decryption and lets you use built-in logs to troubleshoot issues,
such as applications with pinned certificates.
• Lets you enable or disable decryption flexibly based on URL category, source and destination
zone, address, user, user group, device, and port, for privacy and regulatory compliance purposes.
• Allows you to create a copy of decrypted traffic from the firewall (i.e., decryption mirroring) and
send it to traffic collection tools for forensics, historical purposes, or data loss prevention (DLP).
• Allows you to intelligently forward all traffic (decrypted TLS, undecrypted TLS, and non-TLS) to
third-party security tools with network packet broker and optimize your network performance and
reduce operating expenses.
Refer to this decryption whitepaper to learn where, when, and how to decrypt to prevent threats and
secure your business.

Offers AI-Powered Unified Management and Operations with Strata Cloud

Manager
Prevent network disruptions: Forecast deployment health and proactively identify capacity bottlenecks
up to seven days in advance with predictive analytics to proactively prevent operational disruptions.
Strengthen security in real time: AI-powered analysis of policies and real-time compliance checks
against industry and Palo Alto Networks best practices.
Enable simple and consistent network security management and ops: Manage configuration
and security policies across all form factors, including SASE, hardware and software firewalls, and all
security services to ensure consistency and reduce operational overhead.

Detects and Prevents Advanced Threats with Cloud-Delivered Security

Services
The traditional approach of using siloed security tools causes challenges for organizations, i­ncluding
security gaps, increased overhead for security teams, and disruptions in business productivity.
Seamlessly integrated with our industry-leading NGFWs, our Cloud-Delivered Security Services share
threat intelligence across 65,000 customers in order to prevent known and unknown threats across all
threat vectors in real time. Eliminate security gaps in your entire network and take advantage of inline
AI-powered security services that provide real-time protection everywhere.

Strata by Palo Alto Networks | PA-5450 | Datasheet 3

Services include:
• Advanced Threat Prevention: Stop known and unknown exploits and command-and-control
(C2) attacks with inline AI-powered detections, stopping 60% more zero-day injection attacks and
48% more highly evasive command-and-control traffic than traditional IPS solutions.
• Advanced WildFire®: Ensure files are safe by automatically preventing known, unknown, and
highly evasive malware 180X faster than competitors with the industry’s largest threat intelligence
and malware prevention engine.
• Advanced URL Filtering: Ensure safe access to the internet and prevent 40% more web-based
attacks with the industry’s first real-time prevention of known and unknown threats, stopping 88%
of malicious sites at least 48 hours before other vendors.
• DNS Security: Gain 68% more threat coverage and stop 85% of malware that abuses DNS for
command and control and data theft without requiring changes to your infrastructure.
• Enterprise DLP: Minimize risk of a data breach, stop out-of-policy data transfers, and enable
compliance consistently across your enterprise, with 2X greater coverage of any cloud-delivered
enterprise DLP.
• SaaS Security: Stay ahead of the SaaS explosion with the industry’s only Next-Generation CASB
to automatically see and secure all apps across all protocols.
• IoT Security: Safeguard every “thing” and implement Zero Trust device security 20X faster, with
the industry’s smartest security for smart devices.

Delivers a Unique Approach to Packet Processing with Single-Pass

Architecture
• Performs networking, policy lookup, application and decoding, and signature matching—for all
threats and content—in a single pass. This significantly reduces the amount of processing overhead
required to perform multiple functions in one security device.
• Avoids introducing latency by scanning traffic for all signatures in a single pass, using stream-based,
uniform signature matching.
• Enables consistent and predictable performance when security subscriptions are enabled. (In
table 1, “Threat Prevention throughput” is measured with multiple subscriptions enabled.)

Enables SD-WAN Functionality

• Allows you to easily adopt SD-WAN by simply enabling it on your existing firewalls.
• Enables you to safely implement SD-WAN, which is natively integrated with our industry-leading
security.
• Delivers an exceptional end-user experience by minimizing latency, jitter, and packet loss.

Delivers a Unique Approach to Packet Processing with Single-Pass Architecture

• Performs networking, policy lookup, application and ­decoding, and signature matching—for all
threats and content—in a single pass. This significantly reduces the amount of processing over-
head required to perform multiple functions in one security device.
• Avoids introducing latency by scanning traffic for all ­signatures in a single pass, using
stream-based, uniform signature matching.
­

• Enables consistent and predictable performance when ­security subscriptions are enabled. (In
table 1, “Threat Prevention throughput” is measured with multiple ­subscriptions enabled.)

Strata by Palo Alto Networks | PA-5450 | Datasheet 4

PA-5450 Architecture
The PA-5450 is powered by a scalable architecture for the purposes of applying the appropriate type
and volume of processing power to the key functional tasks of networking, security, and m ­ anagement.
The device is managed as a single unified system, enabling you to easily direct all available r­ esources
to protect your data. The PA-5450 intelligently distributes processing demands across three
­subsystems, each with massive amounts of computing power and dedicated memory: the Networking
Card (NC), the Data P
­ rocessing Card (DPC), and the Management P ­ rocessing Card (MPC).
The PA-5450 offers a total of six slots for NCs and DPCs.

Networking Cards
For network connectivity, the PA-5450 requires at least one NC (PA-5400-NC-A). A second NC re-
quires a minimum of two DPCs installed in the system. A maximum of two NCs can be installed. NCs
are dedicated to executing packet ingress and egress tasks.
Each PA-5400-NC-A offers multiple connectivity ports as listed in table 3: 100/1000/10G Cu (4),
1G/10G SFP/SFP+ (12), and 40G/100G QSFP28 (2).

Data Processing Cards

For packet and security processing, the PA-5450 uses DPCs (PA-5400-DPC-A) with a minimum of
one DPC and up to five DPCs that can be placed in the six slots.

Management Processing Cards

The MPC subsystem (PAN-PA-5400-MPC-A) acts as a dedicated point of contact for controlling all
aspects of the PA-5450.

Table 1: PA-5450 ­Performance and Capacities

Single PA-5400- PA-5450 Configured System*
DPC-A
Firewall throughput (appmix)† 75 Gbps 200 Gbps

Threat Prevention throughput (appmix)‡ 55 Gbps 189 Gbps

IPsec VPN throughput §

17 Gbps 85 Gbps||

Max concurrent sessions# 20M 100M||

New sessions per second** 725,000 3.6M||

Virtual systems (base/max)†† — 25/225

Note: Results were measured on PAN-OS 11.1.

* All tests performed with 2 Networking Cards + 4 Data Processing Cards populated, unless otherwise noted.
† Firewall throughput is measured with App-ID and logging enabled, utilizing appmix transactions.
‡ Threat Prevention throughput is measured with App-ID, IPS, antivirus, antispyware, WildFire, DNS Security, file blocking, and logging enabled,
utilizing appmix transactions.
§ IPsec VPN throughput is measured with 64 KB HTTP transactions and logging enabled.
|| This test performed with 1 Networking Card + 5 Data Processing Cards populated.
# Max concurrent sessions are measured utilizing HTTP transactions.
** New sessions per second is measured with application override, utilizing 1 byte HTTP transactions.
†† Adding virtual systems over base quantity requires a separately purchased license.

Strata by Palo Alto Networks | PA-5450 | Datasheet 5

 Table 2: PA-5450 Networking Features
Interface Modes

L2, L3, tap, virtual wire (transparent mode)

Routing

OSPFv2/v3 with graceful restart, BGP with graceful restart, RIP, static routing
Policy-based forwarding

Point-to-Point Protocol over Ethernet (PPPoE) and DHCP s­ upported for dynamic address assignment

Multicast: PIM-SM, PIM-SSM, IGMP v1, v2, and v3

Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD)
SD-WAN

Path quality measurement (jitter, packet loss, latency)

Initial path selection (PBF)

Dynamic path change

IPv6

L2, L3, tap, virtual wire (transparent mode)

Features: App-ID, User-ID, Content-ID, WildFire, and SSL decryption

SLAAC
IPsec and SSL VPN

Key exchange: manual key, IKEv1 and IKEv2 (pre-shared key, certificate-based authentication)

Encryption: 3des, AES (128-bit, 192-bit, 256-bit)

Authentication: MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256, SHA-384, SHA-512

GlobalProtect® Large Scale VPN for simplified configuration and management*

Secure access over IPsec and SSL VPN tunnels using GlobalProtect Gateway and Portals*
VLANs

802.1Q VLAN tags per device/per interface: 4,094/4,094

Aggregate interfaces (802.3ad), LACP
Network Address Translation

NAT modes (IPv4): static IP, Dynamic IP, Dynamic IP and Port (port address translation)
NAT64, NPTv6
Additional NAT features: Dynamic IP reservation, tunable Dynamic IP and Port oversubscription
High Availability

Modes: active/active, active/passive, HA clustering

Failure detection: path monitoring, interface monitoring
Mobile Network Infrastructure†
5G Security
GTP Security
SCTP Security
* Requires GlobalProtect License.
† For additional information, refer to our ML-Powered NGFWs for 5G datasheet.

Strata by Palo Alto Networks | PA-5450 | Datasheet 6

 Table 3: PA-5450 Hardware Specifications
PA-5400-NC-A Networking I/O

100/1000/10G Cu (4), 1G/10G SFP/ SFP+ (12), 40G/100G QSFP28 (2); minimum 1 NC and maximum 2 NCs per system; 2 NCs require
2 or more DPCs installed
PAN-PA-5400-MPC-A Management I/O

SFP/SFP+ MGT (2), SFP/SFP+ HA1 (2), HSCI HA2/HA3 QSFP+/ QSFP28 (2), RJ45 serial console (1), Micro USB serial console (1)

Storage Capacity

480 GB SSD, RAID1, system storage

4 TB SSD, log storage (optional)
Max BTU/hr

8,828
Power Supplies (Base/Max)

2/4
AC Input Voltage (Input Frequency)

100–120 VAC & 200–240 VAC (50–60 Hz)

AC Power Supply Output

2,200 watts/power supply

Max Current Consumption

AC: 100–120 VAC, ~14 A max. per input 200–240 VAC, ~12.5 A max. per input
DC: 48–60 VDC, 52 A max. per input

Max Inrush Current

AC: 35 A @ 230 VAC, 35 A @ 120 VAC

DC: 50 A @ 72 VDC

Rack Mount (Dimensions)

5U, 19” standard rack

8.75” H x 30.25” D x 17.38” W
Maximum Time Between Failure (MTBF)

Configuration dependent; contact your Palo Alto Networks representative for MTBF details.
Safety

cTUVus, CB
EMI

FCC Class A, CE Class A, VCCI Class A, KCC Class A, BSMI Class A

Certifications

See paloaltonetworks.com/company/certifications.html
Environment

Operating temperature: 32°F to 122°F, 0°C to 50°C

Nonoperating temperature: -4°F to 158°F, -20°C to 70°C

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