When split tunneling is enabled with the "Both Network Traffic and DNS" option in the GlobalProtect portal configuration, it allows the firewall to control which traffic is sent over the VPN tunnel and which is not. Specifically, it determines which domains are resolved by the VPN-assigned DNS servers (for domains requiring VPN access) and which are resolved by local DNS servers (for domains that can be accessed without the VPN tunnel).

To ensure high availability (HA) across multiple availability zones (AZs) in a cloud service provider (CSP) environment, using a load balancer with health probes is a recommended method. This setup ensures that traffic can be directed to the healthy NGFW instances across multiple availability zones. If one NGFW instance or availability zone goes down, the load balancer can redirect traffic to the available instance(s) in other zones, providing redundancy and maintaining service availability.

Local firewall rules are evaluated after Panorama pre-rules (those applied before the firewall's local policies) and before Panorama post-rules (those applied after the firewall's local policies).
This ensures that the local firewall rules do not override the central Panorama policy and are only applied in the appropriate order within the policy evaluation sequence.

In the context of virtual systems (VSYS) on a Palo Alto Networks firewall, the external zone is typically associated with specific interfaces within a VSYS. Zones are fundamental security objects used to define traffic flow between interfaces, and the external zone would be used for interfaces that connect to external networks.
An external zone is associated with an interface within a VSYS of the firewall. This ensures that traffic from specific interfaces can be classified as belonging to the external zone, allowing the firewall to apply appropriate security policies.
The external zone is indeed a security object that is specific to a given VSYS, as each VSYS can have its own set of zones that are isolated from others.

Assigning an Admin Role Profile to a user in a Palo Alto Networks NGFW is used to define granular permissions for management tasks. This allows administrators to control what actions a user can perform on the firewall, such as configuration changes, monitoring, and logging. By assigning different admin roles, you can ensure that users have access only to the areas and tasks they need, enforcing the principle of least privilege.