Create a Palo Alto Networks Panorama Machine
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Next‑Gen Trust Security

Create a Palo Alto Networks Panorama Machine

Table of Contents

Create a Palo Alto Networks Panorama Machine

Create a Palo Alto Networks Panorama® machine so Next-Gen Trust Security can discover and provision the certificates that Panorama stores and pushes to your firewalls. It covers the certificates used by GlobalProtect portals and gateways, by the management interface, and by SSL Inbound Inspection decryption policy rules.

Before You Begin

  • A Superuser role or a custom role with write access to the Machines permission set.
  • An active VSatellite that can reach the Panorama management interface over HTTPS.
  • The hostname or IP address of Panorama. The connector works only with a Panorama appliance in Panorama or Management Only mode. It doesn't work with a PAN-OS firewall or a Dedicated Log Collector.
  • A Panorama administrator that only Next-Gen Trust Security uses, assigned to an Admin Role Profile with the Panorama role type and these XML API privileges: Configuration, Operational Requests, Commit, Import, and Export.

To Create a Palo Alto Networks Panorama Machine

  1. Sign in to Next-Gen Trust Security.
  2. Click Insights > Certificate Installations > Machines.
  3. Click New, and then select Palo Alto Panorama.
  4. On the Properties step, in Name, enter a name for the machine.
  5. (Optional) For Authorized Workspaces, choose the workspaces to share the machine with. Sharing is supported for machines that use credentials you enter directly. To learn what other workspaces can do with a shared machine, see Sharing Makes a Resource Visible Elsewhere.
  6. For VSatellite, choose a VSatellite that can reach the machine. The list shows each VSatellite with the number of its active replicas.
  7. In Server Hostname, enter the hostname or IP address of Panorama.
  8. For Credential Type, choose how to provide the credentials:
    • Enter Credentials to enter the credentials in the next step. This is the default.
    • Select Credentials to use credentials stored in a credential manager integration. Then, for Credential, choose the credential.
    Note: Select Credentials requires a configured credential manager integration. Credential manager integrations require additional licensing.
    Important: Your view of credentials depends on the workspace you have selected. Under Tenant you can select any credential in the tenant. Inside a workspace you can select only that workspace's credentials.
  9. If you chose Enter Credentials, enter the Username and Password of the Panorama administrator. If you chose Select Credentials, the stored account needs the same Panorama access.
    Note: Next-Gen Trust Security encrypts the credentials you enter and doesn't display them again. On the machine's Properties tab, they appear masked. To keep a stored credential when you edit the machine, leave its masked value unchanged. Keep your own secure record of the credentials in case you need them again.
  10. Click Test Access. After the connection succeeds, click Continue. The Discovery step opens.
    Note: A successful test confirms that Panorama accepts the credentials and that the appliance is a Panorama in Panorama or Management Only mode. It doesn't check the administrator's XML API privileges.
  11. (Optional) To skip certificates that have already expired, enable Exclude Expired Certificates.
  12. (Optional) In Location(s), enter a comma-separated list of the locations to discover, for example Shared, vsys1, vsys2. Leave it empty to discover every location.
    • Shared, in any case, covers the Shared location of each template and template stack, and Panorama's own configuration. To discover only these, enter Shared alone.
    • A virtual system (vsys) name covers that vsys in every template that has it. Vsys names are case-sensitive, as they are in PAN-OS. A list of vsys names alone skips template stacks and Panorama's own configuration, which have no vsys.
    The list limits which certificates discovery reports, not where it looks up bindings. Discovery still reports a certificate in a listed location with its bindings from unlisted locations, for example a template's Shared certificate that a profile in an unlisted vsys uses.
  13. (Optional) To discover certificates on a schedule, enable Schedule. For Repeat every, choose Day, Week, or Month, and then in At, enter the time. For Week, select the days of the week. For Month, enter the days in Day of month. Times are in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).
  14. Click Continue. The Provisioning step opens.
  15. (Optional) To provision certificates on a schedule, enable Schedule. For Repeat every, choose Day, Week, or Month, and then in At, enter the time. For Week, select the days of the week. For Month, enter the days in Day of month. Times are in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).
    Scheduled provisioning pushes only certificates that are queued for deployment, such as renewed certificates, so renewals install during the window you choose.
  16. Click Finish.

What Discovery Finds

Unless you limit it with Location(s), discovery reads every certificate stored in the following locations, whether or not anything uses it:
  • Panorama's own configuration
  • The Shared location and every vsys of each template. vsys1 is always included.
  • The Shared location of each template stack
The Template and Location of each discovered installation show where discovery found the certificate. An empty Location means the Shared location.
Each SSL/TLS Service Profile or Decryption Policy Rule that uses a certificate is reported as a separate installation of that certificate. A certificate bound to three profiles produces three installations with the same certificate information, and a certificate bound to nothing produces one installation with the binding target type No binding.
Discovery finds bindings where PAN-OS looks a certificate up, which isn't always the certificate's own location:
  • A profile in a vsys can use a certificate from its own vsys or from the template's Shared location.
  • A profile in a template stack can use a certificate from the stack or from one of its member templates.
  • An SSL Inbound Inspection Decryption Policy Rule in a device group's Pre Rules or Post Rules can use certificates from the templates and template stacks that the device group lists under Reference Templates. If the device group lists none, discovery uses the template stacks that share a firewall with it.
Discovery doesn't read the rules of the Shared device group.

Supported Certificate Locations

Next-Gen Trust Security discovers and provisions certificates in every location where Panorama stores them. The Template and Location fields of an installation set the location:
TemplateLocationWhere the certificate is stored
EmptyNot usedPanorama's own configuration
A templateEmpty (Shared), or a vsys of the template, for example vsys1The template's Shared location, or the named vsys
A template stackNot used (always Shared)The template stack's Shared location
The location is part of the installation's identity. A certificate with the same name in the Shared location and in vsys2 of the same template is tracked as two separate installations. Vsys names are case-sensitive, as they are in PAN-OS, so VSYS1 isn't vsys1.

How Next-Gen Trust Security Changes the Panorama Configuration

Next-Gen Trust Security connects to Panorama as a Panorama administrator. It commits only that administrator's changes, and it pushes only that administrator's changes to firewalls. Other administrators' pending or unpushed changes in the same template, template stack, or device group stay as they are. The one exception is a push to a template that isn't in any template stack. PAN-OS can't limit that push by administrator, so it includes every committed change in that template. Such a template has no firewalls. For details, see Commit and Push.
Tip: Use a dedicated Panorama administrator that only Next-Gen Trust Security uses. Next-Gen Trust Security limits commits and pushes by administrator, so if people also sign in to Panorama with that account, Next-Gen Trust Security commits and pushes their pending changes in the affected templates and device groups together with the certificate.

What's Next?

After you create the machine, provision a certificate to it. You can also run discovery on the machine at any time to track the certificates in Panorama.