Determine Panorama Log Storage Requirements

1. Determine the log retention requirements of your organization.

   Factors that affect log retention requirements include:

   • IT policy of your organization
   • Log redundancy—If you enable log redundancy when you Configure a Collector Group, each log will have two copies, which doubles your required log storage capacity.
   • Regulatory requirements, such as those specified by the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

   If your organization requires the removal of logs after a certain period, you can set the expiration period for each log type. You can also set a storage quota for each log type as a percentage of the total space if you need to prioritize log retention by type. For details, see Manage Storage Quotas and Expiration Periods for Logs and Reports.
2. Determine the average daily logging rates.

   Do this multiple times each day at peak and non-peak times to estimate the average. The more often you sample the rates, the more accurate your estimate.

   1. Display the current log generation rate in logs per second:

      • If Panorama is not yet collecting logs, access the CLI of each firewall, run the following command, and calculate the total rates for all the firewalls. This command displays the number of logs received in the last second.

      > debug log-receiver statistics

      • If Panorama is already collecting logs, run the following command at the CLI of each appliance that receives logs (Panorama management server or Dedicated Log Collector) and calculate the total rates. This command gives the average logging rate for the last five minutes.

      > debug log-collector log-collection-stats show incoming-logs

      You can also use an SNMP manager to determine the logging rates of Log Collectors (see the panLogCollector MIB, OID 1.3.6.1.4.1.25461.1.1.6) and firewalls (see the panDeviceLogging, OID 1.3.6.1.4.1.25461.2.1.2.7).
   2. Calculate the average of the sampled rates.
   3. Calculate the daily logging rate by multiplying the average logs-per-second by 86,400.
3. Estimate the required storage capacity.

   This formula provides only an estimate; the exact amount of required storage will differ from the formula result.

   Use the formula:

   [(<logs_per_second> x 86400) x <days_of retention>] x <average_log_size> ÷ (1024 x 1024 x 1024)

   The average log size varies considerably by log type. However, you can use 489 bytes as an approximate average log size.

   For example, if Panorama must store logs for 30 days with a log rate of 1,500 LPS, then the required log storage capacity is: [(1500 x 86400) x 30] x 489 ÷ (1024 x 1024 x 1024) = 1770GB.

   The results above are calculations for the detailed logs only with the default quota settings reserve 60% of the available storage for detail logs. This means that the calculated number represents 60% of the storage used by the Log Collector. To calculate the total storage required, divide this number by .60: 1770 ÷ .6 = 2951GB.

   One third, roughly 33%, of the avilable disk space is allocated to logd formatted logs to support upgrades, downgrades, and to support fixing database corruption. To calculate the total storage, divide the storage required by .66: 2951 ÷ .66 = 4471 total storage.
4. Next steps...

   If you determine that Panorama requires more log storage capacity:

   • Expand Log Storage Capacity on the Panorama Virtual Appliance.
   • Increase Storage on the M-Series Appliance.