: Upgrade an HA Firewall Pair
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Upgrade an HA Firewall Pair

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End-of-Life (EoL)

Upgrade an HA Firewall Pair

Follow these steps to upgrade an HA firewall pair to PAN-OS 10.0.
Review the PAN-OS 10.0 Release Notes and then use the following procedure to upgrade a pair of firewalls in a high availability (HA) configuration. This procedure applies to both active/passive and active/active configurations.
To avoid downtime when upgrading firewalls that are in a high availability (HA) configuration, update one HA peer at a time: For active/active firewalls, it doesn’t matter which peer you upgrade first (though for simplicity, this procedure shows you how to upgrade the active-primary peer first). For active/passive firewalls, you must suspend (fail over) and upgrade the active (primary) peer first. After you upgrade the primary peer, you must unsuspend the primary peer to return it to a functional state (passive). Next, you must suspend the passive (secondary) peer to make the primary peer active again. After the primary peer is active and the secondary peer is suspended, you can continue the upgrade. To prevent failover during the upgrade of the HA peers, you must make sure preemption is disabled before proceeding with the upgrade. You only need to disable preemption on one peer in the pair.
(
A/P HA Configuration only
) When upgrading HA firewalls across multiple feature PAN-OS releases, you must upgrade each HA peer to the same feature PAN-OS release on your upgrade path before continuing. For example, you are upgrading HA peers from PAN-OS 9.0 to PAN-OS 10.0. You must upgrade both HA peers to PAN-OS 9.1 before you can continue upgrading to the target PAN-OS 10.0 release.
To avoid impacting traffic, plan to upgrade within the outage window. Ensure the firewalls are connected to a reliable power source. A loss of power during an upgrade can make firewalls unusable.
  1. Save a backup of the current configuration file.
    Although the firewall automatically creates a backup of the configuration, it is a best practice to create and externally store a backup before you upgrade.
    Perform these steps on each firewall in the pair:
    1. Select
      Device
      Setup
      Operations
      and click
      Export named configuration snapshot
      .
    2. Select the XML file that contains your running configuration (for example,
      running-config.xml
      ) and click
      OK
      to export the configuration file.
    3. Save the exported file to a location external to the firewall. You can use this backup to restore the configuration if you have problems with the upgrade.
  2. Select
    Device
    Support
    and
    Generate Tech Support File
    .
    Click
    Yes
    when prompted to generate the tech support file.
  3. If you have enabled User-ID, after you upgrade, the firewall clears the current IP address-to-username and group mappings so that they can be repopulated with the attributes from the User-ID sources. To estimate the time required for your environment to repopulate the mappings, run the following CLI commands on the firewall.
    • For IP address-to-username mappings:
      • show user user-id-agent state all
      • show user server-monitor state all
    • For group mappings:
      show user group-mapping statistics
  4. Ensure that each firewall in the HA pair is running the latest content release version.
    Refer to the release notes for the minimum content release version you must install for a PAN-OS 10.0 release. Make sure to follow the Best Practices for Application and Threat Updates.
    1. Select
      Device
      Dynamic Updates
      and check which
      Applications
      or
      Applications and Threats
      to determine which update is Currently Installed.
    2. If the firewalls are not running the minimum required content release version or a later version required for PAN-OS 10.0,
      Check Now
      to retrieve a list of available updates.
    3. Locate and
      Download
      the desired content release version.
      After you successfully download a content update file, the link in the Action column changes from
      Download
      to
      Install
      for that content release version.
    4. Install
      the update. You must install the update on both peers.
  5. You cannot skip installation of any feature release versions in the path from the currently running PAN-OS version to PAN-OS 10.0.0.
    Review the known issues and changes to default behavior in the Release Notes and upgrade/downgrade considerations in the New Features Guide for each release through which you pass as part of your upgrade path.
  6. If Control Link (HA1) Encryption is enabled, disable it on both HA peers.
    1. Select
      Device
      High Availability
      General
      and edit the Control Link (HA1) section.
    2. Uncheck
      Encryption Enabled
      so that it is disabled.
    3. Commit
      the change on both peers.
  7. Disable preemption on the first peer in each pair. You only need to disable this setting on one firewall in the HA pair but ensure that the commit is successful before you proceed with the upgrade.
    1. Select
      Device
      High Availability
      and edit the
      Election Settings
      .
    2. If enabled, disable (clear) the
      Preemptive
      setting and click
      OK
      .
    3. Commit
      the change.
  8. Suspend the primary HA peer to force a failover.
    (
    Active/passive firewalls
    ) For firewalls in an active/passive HA configuration, suspend and upgrade the active HA peer first.
    (
    Active/active firewalls
    ) For firewalls in an active/active HA configuration, suspend and upgrade the active-primary HA peer first.
    1. Select
      Device
      High Availability
      Operational Commands
      and
      Suspend local device for high availability
      .
    2. In the bottom-right corner, verify that the state is
      suspended
      .
      The resulting failover should cause the secondary HA peer to transition to
      active
      state.
      The resulting failover verifies that HA failover is functioning properly before you upgrade.
  9. Install PAN-OS 10.0 on the suspended peer.
    1. On the first peer, select
      Device
      Software
      and click
      Check Now
      for the latest updates.
    2. Locate and
      Download
      PAN-OS 10.0.0.
      If your firewall does not have internet access from the management port, you can download the software image from the Palo Alto Networks Support Portal and then manually
      Upload
      it to your firewall.
    3. After you download the image (or, for a manual upgrade, after you upload the image),
      Install
      the image.
    4. After the installation completes successfully, reboot using one of the following methods:
      • If you are prompted to reboot, click
        Yes
        .
      • If you are not prompted to reboot, select
        Device
        Setup
        Operations
        and
        Reboot Device
        .
    5. After the device finishes rebooting, view the High Availability widget on the
      Dashboard
      and verify that the device you just upgraded is in sync with the peer.
  10. Restore HA functionality to the primary HA peer.
    1. Select
      Device
      High Availability
      Operational Commands
      and
      Make local device functional for high availability
      .
    2. In the bottom-right corner, verify that the state is
      Passive
      . For firewalls in an active/active configuration, verify that the state is
      Active
      .
    3. Wait for the HA peer running configuration to synchronize.
      In the
      Dasbhoard
      , monitor the Running Config status in the High Availability widget.
  11. On the secondary HA peer, suspend the HA peer.
    1. Select
      Device
      High Availability
      Operational Commands
      and
      Suspend local device for high availability
      .
    2. In the bottom-right corner, verify that the state is
      suspended
      .
      The resulting failover should cause the primary HA peer to transition to
      Active
      state.
  12. Install PAN-OS 10.0 on the secondary HA peer.
    1. On the second peer, select
      Device
      Software
      and click
      Check Now
      for the latest updates.
    2. Locate and
      Download
      PAN-OS 10.0.0.
    3. After you download the image,
      Install
      it.
    4. After the installation completes successfully, reboot using one of the following methods:
      • If you are prompted to reboot, click
        Yes
        .
      • If you are not prompted to reboot, select
        Device
        Setup
        Operations
        and
        Reboot Device
        .
  13. Restore HA functionality to the secondary HA peer.
    1. Select
      Device
      High Availability
      Operational Commands
      and
      Make local device functional for high availability
      .
    2. In the bottom-right corner, verify that the state is
      Passive
      . For firewalls in an active/active configuration, verify that the state is
      Active
      .
    3. Wait for the HA peer running configuration to synchronize.
      In the
      Dasbhoard
      , monitor the Running Config status High Availability widget.
  14. If you disabled Control Link (HA1) Encryption, re-enable it on both firewalls.
    1. Export the HA key from one firewall and import it into the peer firewall.
      1. Select
        Device
        Certificate Management
        Certificates
        .
      2. Select
        Export HA key
        . Save the HA key to a network location that the peer can access.
      3. On the peer firewall, select
        Device
        Certificate Management
        Certificates
        , and select
        Import HA key
        to browse to the location where you saved the key and import it into the peer.
      4. Repeat this step on the peer firewall to exchange HA keys on both devices.
    2. Select
      Device
      High Availability
      General
      and edit the Control Link (HA1) section.
    3. Select
      Encryption Enabled
      .
    4. Commit
      the change.
    5. Repeat this step on the peer firewall.
  15. Re-enable preemption on the HA peer where it was disabled in the previous step.
    1. Select
      Device
      High Availability
      and edit the
      Election Settings
      .
    2. Enable (check) the
      Preemptive
      setting and click
      OK
      .
    3. Commit
      the change.
  16. Verify that both peers are passing traffic as expected.
    In an active/passive configuration, only the active peer should be passing traffic; both peers should be passing traffic in an active/active configuration.
    Run the following CLI commands to confirm that the upgrade succeeded:
    • (
      Active peers only
      ) To verify that active peers are passing traffic, run the
      show session all
      command.
    • To verify session synchronization, run the
      show high-availability interface ha2
      command and make sure that the Hardware Interface counters on the CPU table are increasing as follows:
      • In an active/passive configuration, only the active peer shows packets transmitted; the passive peer will show only packets received.
        If you enabled HA2 keep-alive, the hardware interface counters on the passive peer will show both transmit and receive packets. This occurs because HA2 keep-alive is bi-directional, which means that both peers transmit HA2 keep-alive packets.
      • In an active/active configuration, you will see packets received and packets transmitted on both peers.

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