: Understand Service and Data Center Groups
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Understand Service and Data Center Groups

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Understand Service and Data Center Groups

312 PIC
Prisma SD-WAN uses mapping of standard services and Prisma SD-WAN data centers to allow flexibility when creating network policy rules, while accounting for uniqueness across sites. For example, an administrator may want to create a single network policy that directs all HTTP and SSL Internet bound traffic through the primary Palo Alto Prisma Access for Networks in the region if it is available. If not available, it may leverage the backup Palo Alto Prisma Access for Networks in the region. Now, the administrator will have different primary and backup cloud security service endpoints based on their geographic location. Regardless of the site location, the intent and the policy rules will remain the same.
This is where the concept of endpoints, groups, and domains come into play. To leverage the underlying resources available to an administrator, it is important to understand how an endpoint, group, and domain work in the Prisma SD-WAN system.
  • Endpoint—A service endpoint is a label representing a specific location or network service. It can be of type Prisma SD-WAN, specifically Prisma SD-WAN Data Centers for Data Center transit services, or of type standard.
  • Group—A service group is a label representing a set of common service endpoint types. This service group label will be used in network policy rules to express intent to allow or force traffic to the defined service endpoints. It can be of type Prisma SD-WAN or standard and may contain zero or more service endpoints.
  • Domain—A domain is a collection of groups which can be assigned to a set of sites. There can be multiple domains defined, but a site may only be assigned to one domain at a time.
A site will be able to use only the endpoints configured in a group within a domain that is assigned to the site. The same group, however, can be in multiple domains with different service endpoints, allowing you to use the same policy across different sites utilizing different endpoints.
Let us further explore the concept of endpoints, groups, and domains using the following illustration.
The illustration displays how endpoints added to a group are associated with a domain. The domains are then bound to a site, thus mapping standard services or Prisma SD-WAN data centers uniquely for each site.
A group, with different endpoints, can be mapped to one or more domains and a domain can be mapped to one or more sites.
Another example to illustrate the concept is shown. For a customer with sites in North America and Europe that has one Prisma SD-WAN-enabled data center in each region and has adopted a Palo Alto Prisma Access for Networks within each region, with two geographic locations in each region, domain mapping is accomplished as follows:
The same endpoint can be added to more than one group. Only one active group and one backup group may be used in a network policy rule.

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