Plan the VM-Series Auto Scaling Template for AWS (v2.0 and v2.1)
Table of Contents
Plan the VM-Series Auto Scaling Template for AWS (v2.0 and v2.1)
The items in this checklist are actions and choices
you must make to implement this solution.
Planning
Checklist for Templates v2.0 and v2.1 | |
|---|---|
| The auto scaling template requires AWS Lambda and S3 Signature versions 2 or 4,
and can deploy VM-Series firewalls running supported PAN-OS versions.
You need to look up the list of supported regions and the AMI IDs, to
provide as an input in the firewall template. |
| The user who deploys the VM-Series Auto
Scaling template must either have administrative privileges or have
the permissions listed in the iam-policy.json to launch this solution
successfully. Copy and paste the permissions from this file in to
a new IAM policy and then attach the policy to a new or existing
IAM role. For a cross-account deployment, to access resources
that are in a different AWS accounts, the IAM role for the user
who deploys the application template must have full SQS access permissions
and a trust relationship that authorizes her to write to the SQS
queue that belongs to the firewall template. |
| For a deployment where the firewall template
and the application template are in different accounts, the account
that hosts the firewall template resources is the trusting account
and the other AWS account(s) that hold the application template
resources are the trusted accounts. To launch the application template
in a cross-account deployment, you need the following information:
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| You can opt for the BYOL or PAYG licenses.
|
| In the AWS Marketplace, search for Palo
Alto Networks, and select the bundle you plan to use. The VM-Series
firewalls will fail to deploy if you have not accepted the EULA
for the bundle you plan to use.
|
| Palo Alto Networks provides public S3 buckets
in all AWS regions included in the supported regions list. These S3 buckets
include all the templates, AWS Lambda code, and the bootstrap files
that you need. Palo Alto Networks recommends using the
bootstrap files in the public S3 bucket only for evaluating this
solution. For a production deployment, you must create a private
S3 bucket for the bootstrap package. The naming convention
for the S3 bucket is panw-aws-autoscale-v20-<region_name>.
For example, the bucket in the AWS Oregon region is panw-aws-autoscale-v20-us-west-2. To
use your private S3 bucket, you must download and copy the templates,
AWS Lambda code, and the bootstrap files to your private S3 bucket.
You can place all the required files for both the firewall template and
the application template in one S3 bucket or place them in separate S3
buckets. |
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| To ensure that your production environment
is secure, you must customize the bootstrap.xml file
with a unique administrative username and password for production
deployments. The default username and password are pandemo/demopassword.
You can also use this opportunity to create an optimal firewall
configuration with interfaces, zones, and security policy rules
that meet your application security needs. |
| Panorama is an option for administrative
ease and is the best practice for managing the firewalls. It is
not required to manage the auto scaling tier of VM-Series firewalls
deployed in this solution. If you want to use Panorama, you
can either a Panorama virtual appliance on AWS or use an M-Series
appliance or a Panorama virtual appliance inside your corporate
network. The Panorama must be in Panorama mode and not
Management Only mode. To successfully register the
firewalls with Panorama, you must collect the following details:
In order to reduce the cost and scale limits
of using Elastic IP addresses, the firewalls do not have public
IPs. If you are not using Panorama to manage the firewalls, you
must deploy a jump server (a bastion host with an EIP address) that
attaches to the Untrust subnet within the VPC to enable SSH and/or
HTTPS access to the VM-Series firewalls. By default, this solution
includes an AWS NAT gateway that the firewalls use to initiate outbound
requests for retrieving updates, connecting to Panorama, and publishing
metrics to AWS CloudWatch. |
