Megaport Virtual Edge Upgrades Enable Palo Alto Networks Firewalls and More

By Henry Wagner, Chief Marketing Officer

Megaport’s latest Megaport Virtual Edge (MVE) enhancements mean higher performance, more choice, and additional security partner options for customers.

Two years following its launch, Megaport Virtual Edge (MVE) has evolved into a market-leading Network Function Virtualization (NFV) service – meaning you can host and deploy virtual instances of network technologies like SD-WAN gateways, virtual routers, and Next-Generation Firewalls (NGFWs) in minutes without physical equipment.

MVE is the underlay providing compute, networking, and internet on demand that integrates seamlessly with your overlay solutions, which can come from a wide range of partners such as Cisco, Fortinet, Versa, and others.

Megaport is excited to announce new MVE upgrades that provide even more flexibility and control over your edge networking, and the addition of a new technology alliance partner – Palo Alto Networks.

MVE upgrades

Previously, MVE had been offered as a bundle with preset compute, virtual circuits, and IP transit specifications. This meant customers had to choose a bundle that most closely met their needs.

But now, we’ve unbundled IP transit to separate compute from Virtual Cross Connects (VXCs) and transit VXCs. By unbundling compute and transit functions, you can now get a new level of configurability and flexibility by further customizing your network to suit your needs.

MVE is now also available in four sizes and has double the RAM of our previous version for better performance. The compute sizes are now 2/8, 4/16, 8/32, and 12/48, where the first number is the CPU and the second number is the GB of available RAM.

The benefits

• Flexibility: Right-size your virtual underlay to meet changing demands, optimize costs, and scale your internet up and down without having to rebuild your SD-WAN or firewalls – no configuration needed.
• Ease of use: Spin up firewalls and scale up or down in minutes with a network you can customize as you go, all via the Megaport Portal.
• Better reporting: Compute and transit VXCs will now appear as two separate line items on your bill, giving you more granular insight and control over your virtual network.

An example of how these upgrades support flexibility and cost management is if a customer wants to use APIs to automate bandwidth changes for certain time slots; for example, provisioning 1 GB bandwidth during business hours and 100 MB outside of business hours to reduce overall costs with no impact on productivity.

Or, if a customer believes they may need to increase the size of their MVE, they can now quickly spin up a larger size to test its functionality in parallel with their existing size. If this trial of the larger size is successful, the customer can easily transition their circuits while the smaller size is active, providing a redundant connection to minimize network downtime.

Integrating Palo Alto Networks VM-Series

Megaport is excited to welcome Palo Alto Networks as our latest MVE-enabled partner. Palo Alto Networks VM-Series Virtual Next-Generation Firewalls can now be instantiated on MVE. Customers can now use MVE to extend their network security fabric closer to where their applications and end users reside, improving their security posture.

Palo Alto is a global leader in cybersecurity, specializing in Cloud-Delivered Security Services, SD-WAN, Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), and NGFWs. Palo Alto Networks VM-Series virtual firewalls give customers best-in-class network security for public clouds, private clouds, virtual branches, and critical infrastructure.

As modern network environments grow to house data anywhere from clouds and data centers to branches and remote locations, complexity and risk grows. Virtual firewalls are a highly effective way of securing your network with control and consistency. But deploying individual firewalls across various locations and within clouds can be a time-consuming process that impairs network performance. It’s important to have the ability to deploy virtual firewalls quickly, simply, and securely at your network edge, as close to your users as possible. Palo Alto Networks’ VM-Series virtual firewalls provide the robust security needed to protect your users, applications, and data, and now you can also leverage Megaport’s vast footprint of data centers and on-ramps, and our global private network to secure your network and ensure that it is highly performant.

The benefits

• Fast deployment: Virtually provision Palo Alto Networks VM-Series virtual firewalls in just a few minutes.
• Easy to configure and manage: Get ease of use across an integrated end-to-end network security platform.
• Multicloud reach: Establish secure, multicloud connections to over 360 service providers and over 280 cloud on-ramps.
• ROI value: Reduce cost on cloud egress fees from leading cloud providers, and enjoy overall less cost than traditional connectivity methods.

The license and service combination for Palo Alto Networks and Megaport.

Use case for MVE with Palo Alto Networks VM-Series

Here’s an example of how you can secure cloud-to-cloud traffic with MVE as your underlay and Palo Alto Networks VM-Series as your overlay.

By hosting an instance of Palo Alto Networks VM-Series virtual firewalls on Megaport Virtual Edge, security teams can aggregate and inspect traffic from multiple cloud providers and applications using one virtual firewall. MVE connects directly and privately via VXCs to each cloud provider, ensuring traffic is taken off the insecure public internet for inspection on the Palo Alto Networks VM-Series virtual firewall instance.

As MVE evolves with a changing global networking landscape, you can count on unmatched oversight, accessibility, flexibility, and security. These features and additions mean you can continue to spin up edge networking in minutes, reduce cloud egress costs, and improve network performance and security.

Learn more about MVE with Palo Alto Networks in our Docs Portal.

If you want to see how our MVE upgrades and Palo Alto enablement can give you your best network yet, contact our Sales team.