: Preview, Validate, or Commit Configuration Changes
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Preview, Validate, or Commit Configuration Changes

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Preview, Validate, or Commit Configuration Changes

You can perform Panorama Commit, Validation, and Preview Operations on pending changes to the Panorama configuration and then push those changes to the devices that Panorama manages, including firewalls, Log Collectors, and WildFire appliances and appliance clusters. You can filter the pending changes by administrator or location and then commit, push, validate, or preview only those changes. The locations can be specific device groups, templates, Collector Groups, Log Collectors, shared settings, or the Panorama management server.
Because Panorama pushes its running configuration, you cannot push changes to devices until you first commit them to Panorama. If the changes are not ready to activate on devices, you can select
Commit
Commit to Panorama
to commit the changes to the Panorama configuration without pushing them to devices. Later, when the changes are ready to activate on devices, you can select
Commit
Push to Devices
. If the changes are ready to activate on both Panorama and the devices, select
Commit
Commit and Push
as described in the following procedure.
(
Device Groups only
) When you make a configuration change to a parent device group, pushing these changes to managed firewalls associated with its child device groups is supported only from the Panorama web interface. In this instance, device group configuration changes pushed from the Panorama CLI are pushed only to managed firewalls directly associated with the impacted device group and not to any managed firewalls associated with its child device groups. Child device groups are selected by default when you push a device group configuration change for a parent device group from the Panorama web interface and are not included by default when you push from the Panorama CLI.
For example, you create
ParentDG1
with two firewall associated and its
ChildDG2
with two different managed firewalls associated. You make configuration changes to
ParentDG1
.
In this scenario,
Push to Devices
and
Commit and Push
from the Panorama web interface successfully push the
ParentDG1
changes to all four firewalls. However, the
commit-all
operation from the Panorama CLI pushes only to managed firewalls associated with
ParentDG1
.
  1. Configure the scope of configuration changes that you will commit, validate, or preview.
    1. Click
      Commit
      at the top of the web interface.
    2. Select one of the following options:
      • Commit All Changes
        (default)—Applies the commit to all changes for which you have administrative privileges. You cannot manually filter the commit scope when you select this option. Instead, the administrator role assigned to the account you used to log in determines the commit scope.
      • Commit Changes Made By
        —Enables you to filter the commit scope by administrator or location. The administrative role assigned to the account you used to log in determines which changes you can filter.
      To commit the changes of other administrators, the account you used to log in must be assigned the Superuser role or an Admin Role profile with the
      Commit For Other Admins
      privilege enabled.
    3. (
      Optional
      ) To filter the commit scope by administrator, select
      Commit Changes Made By
      , click the adjacent link, select the administrators, and click
      OK
      .
    4. (
      Optional
      ) To filter by location, select
      Commit Changes Made By
      and clear any changes that you want to exclude from the Commit Scope.
      If dependencies between the configuration changes you included and excluded cause a validation error, perform the commit with all the changes included. For example, when you commit changes to a device group, you must include the changes of all administrators who added, deleted, or repositioned rules for the same rulebase in that device group.
  2. Preview the changes that the commit will activate.
    When you preview changes after you delete and then re-add the same device to a policy rule, Panorama displays that same device as both deleted in the running configuration and as added in the candidate configuration. Additionally, the order of devices in the device target list in the running configuration may then be different from the candidate configuration and display as a change when you preview changes even when there aren't any configuration changes.
    This can be useful if, for example, you don’t remember all your changes and you’re not sure you want to activate all of them.
    Panorama compares the configurations you selected in the Commit Scope to the running configuration. The preview window displays the configurations side-by-side and uses color coding to indicate which changes are additions (green), modifications (yellow), or deletions (red).
    Preview Changes
    and select the
    Lines of Context
    , which is the number of lines from the compared configuration files to display before and after the highlighted differences. These lines help you correlate the preview output to settings in the web interface. Close the preview window when you finish reviewing the changes.
    Because the preview results display in a new window, your browser must allow pop-up windows. If the preview window does not open, refer to your browser documentation for the steps to unblock pop-up windows.
  3. Preview the individual settings for which you are committing changes.
    This can be useful if you want to know details about the changes, such as the types of settings and who changed them.
    1. Click
      Change Summary
      .
    2. (
      Optional
      )
      Group By
      a column name (such as the
      Type
      of setting).
    3. Close
      the Change Summary dialog when you finish reviewing the changes.
  4. Validate the changes before committing to ensure the commit will succeed.
    1. Validate Changes
      .
      The results display all the errors and warnings that an actual commit would display.
    2. Resolve any errors that the validation results identify.
  5. (
    Optional
    ) Modify the Push Scope.
    By default, the Push Scope includes all locations with changes that require a Panorama commit.
    If you select
    Commit
    Push to Devices
    , the push scope includes all locations associated with devices that are out of sync with the Panorama running configuration.
    1. Remove Selections
      to remove firewalls listed in the Push Scope.
    2. Edit Selections
      and select:
      • Device Groups
        —Select device groups or individual firewalls or virtual systems.
      • Templates
        —Select templates, template stacks, or individual firewalls.
      • Collector Groups
        —Select Collector Groups.
      • Merge with Device Candidate Config
        —This setting is enabled by default and merges any pending local firewall configurations with the configuration push from Panorama. The local firewall configuration is merged and committed regardless of the admin pushing the changes from Panorama or the admin who made the local firewall configuration changes.
        Disable this setting if you manage and commit local firewall configuration changes independently of the Panorama managed configuration.
    3. Click
      OK
      to save your changes to the Push Scope.
  6. Validate the changes you will push to device groups or templates.
    1. Validate Device Group Push
      or
      Validate Template Push
      .
      The results display all the errors and warnings that an actual push operation would display.
    2. Resolve any errors that the validation results identify.
  7. Commit your changes to Panorama and push the changes to devices.
    Commit and Push
    the configuration changes.
    Use the Panorama Task Manager to see details about commits that are pending (optionally, you can cancel these), in progress, completed, or failed.
  8. Verify the configuration push from Panorama was successful.
    1. Run one of the following commands.
      admin>
      show config pushed-template
      admin>
      show config merged
      The
      show
      commands for specific configuration objects are designed to show only the local firewall configuration and not the Panorama-pushed configuration.
      For example, the
      show network virtual router
      command ran on the firewall CLI shows only the virtual router configuration local to the firewall and does not show the Panorama-pushed virtual router configuration.

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