: VM-Series Plugin
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VM-Series Plugin

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VM-Series Plugin

The VM-Series plugin enables Palo Alto Networks to release cloud provider integrations or hypervisor integrations without upgrading PAN-OS.
The VM-Series firewalls include the VM-Series plugin, a built-in plugin architecture for integration with public cloud providers or private cloud hypervisors. The VM-Series plugin can be manually upgraded independent of PAN-OS, enabling Palo Alto Networks® to accelerate the release of new features, fixes, or integrations with new cloud providers or hypervisors.
The VM-Series plugin enables you to manage cloud-specific interactions between the VM-Series firewalls and the supported public cloud platforms—AWS, GCP, and Azure. The plugin enables publishing custom metrics to cloud monitoring services (such as AWS CloudWatch), bootstrapping, configuring user credential provisioning information from public cloud environments, and seamless updates for cloud libraries or agents on PAN-OS.
The VM-Series plugin does not manage capabilities that are common to both VM-Series firewalls and hardware-based firewalls. For example, VM Monitoring is not part of the VM-Series plugin because it is a core PAN-OS feature that helps you enforce policy consistently on your virtual machine workloads from both VM-Series firewalls and hardware-based firewalls.
The VM-Series plugin does not manage Panorama plugins. For the difference between the VM-Series plugin and Panorama plugins, see VM-Series Plugin and Panorama Plugins.
The VM-Series plugin is a built-in component that can be upgraded or downgraded, but not removed. Each PAN-OS release includes a specific VM-Series plugin version that corresponds to the PAN-OS software version. When you downgrade to an earlier PAN-OS software version, the plugin version is downgraded to the version compatible with the PAN-OS version. You can upgrade or downgrade the VM-Series plugin locally on the virtual firewall, or manage the plugin version centrally from Panorama.
To enable Panorama to manage the VM-Series plugin version itself, or cloud-specific metrics publishing your managed firewalls, you must manually install the VM-Series plugin on Panorama as described in Panorama Plugins.