Configure Advanced Routing for SD-WAN

Table of Contents

Enable Segmentation with Multiple Virtual Routers for Overlapping Subnets

Configure advanced routing for SD-WAN traffic.

Where Can I Use This?	What Do I Need?
NGFW	SD-WAN license

Advanced Routing Engine allows the firewall to scale and provide stable, high-performing, and highly available routing functions to large data centers, ISPs, enterprises, and cloud users. The Advanced Routing Engine relies on industry-standard configuration methodology, which facilitates the administrator tasks. It allows the creation of profiles that are used for different functions (such as, filtering, redistribution, and metric changes), all of which can be used across logical routers. These profiles provide finer granularity to filter routes for each dynamic routing protocol and improve route redistribution across multiple protocols.

Although conceptually equivalent, the advanced routing engine uses logical routers rather than virtual routers to instantiate routing domains.

Unlike virtual routers, logical routers are not created by default; you must create one before configuring the routing functions.

You can use an advanced routing engine or a legacy engine based on your network requirements:

When you enable Advanced Routing, logical routers are created and advanced routing engine is used for routing.
When you disable Advanced Routing, virtual routers are created and legacy engine is used for routing.

The advanced route engine supports multiple logical routers (known as a virtual router on the legacy route engine). The advanced route engine has more convenient menu options and there are more BGP settings that you can easily configure in a profile (authentication, timers, address family, or redistribution profile) that applies to a BGP peer group or peer, for example.

The Advanced Routing Engine supports static routes, MP-BGP, OSPFv2, OSPFv3, RIPv2, Protocol Independent Multicast Sparse Mode (PIM-SM), PIM Source-Specific Multicast (SSM), BFD, redistribution, route filtering into the RIB, access lists, prefix lists, and route maps.

You’ll need the following to configure advanced routing engine on SD-WAN:

Platform	Firewalls running PAN-OS Release	SD-WAN Plugin
Panorama^TM	11.0 or later	3.1.0 or later

SD-WAN plugin creates logical router or virtual router based on the value of the advanced routing option. When Advanced Routing is enabled, a logical router is created; Otherwise, virtual router is created.

When you enable advanced routing in template stack and perform a Panorama commit and push to the firewall, SD-WAN plugin runs the migration script to create the SD-WAN related objects (static, interfaces, redistribution profile, BGP) in Logical Router. The migration script creates the logical router name same as the virtual router name for the same template. Hence the hubs and branches have always the same router name.

After migration, Panorama does not allow you to delete the migrated virtual routers.

The Panorama SD-WAN plugin 3.1.0 and later versions can concurrently manage firewalls using the Advanced Routing Engine and firewalls using the legacy routing engine. The benefit is that you can migrate select managed firewalls to the new Advanced Routing Engine while still maintaining your current legacy routing engine configuration on others.

(SD-WAN plugin 3.1.0 and later versions) While the SD-WAN plugin manages a firewall regardless of the routing engine, only one routing engine configuration can be in effect at a time on a managed firewall. You can use the Advanced Routing option to enable or disable the advanced routing engine. Each time you change the engine that the firewall uses (you enable or disable Advanced Routing to access the advanced engine or legacy engine, respectively), you must commit the configuration and reboot the firewall for the changes to take effect.

Before you switch to the advanced route engine, make a backup of your current configuration. Similarly, if you configure Panorama with a template stack that enables or disables Advanced Routing, after you commit and push the template stack to devices, you must reboot the devices in the template stack for the change to take effect.

When configuring Panorama, create device groups and template stack for devices that all use the same Advanced Routing setting (all enabled or all disabled). Panorama won’t push configurations with Advanced Routing enabled to smaller firewalls that don’t support Advanced Routing. For those firewalls, Panorama will push a legacy configuration if one is present.

Ensure that you downgrade to an appropriate SD-WAN plugin and PAN-OS version, and disable Advanced Routing if you plan to use a virtual router. Use a separate template where the Advanced Routing is disabled (in this case, virtual routers are created) when downgrading the SD-WAN plugin.

If you have configured Advanced Routing and want to switch to a virtual router, then disable Advanced Routing to return to the previously saved virtual router configuration. Commit and push any changes made to the firewall after disabling advanced routing before attempting a downgrade procedure, such as downgrading PAN-OS and SD-WAN plugin versions.

If you enable Advanced Routing, SD-WAN interfaces must be configured in the same logical router; they cannot be split among logical routers.

Log in to the Panorama Web Interface.
Upgrade Panorama to 11.1 or later versions and install the SD-WAN plugin 3.1.0 or later versions.
Add your hub and branch firewalls as managed devices to the Panorama^TM management server.
Make a backup of your current configuration before you enable Advanced Routing.
In the Device section, select appropriate template stack from the Template context drop-down.
Enable advanced routing engine.
1. Select DeviceSetupManagement and edit the General Settings.
2. Enable Advanced Routing. SD-WAN plugin will create logical router or virtual router based on the value of the advanced routing option. When Advanced Routing is enabled, a logical router is created. Otherwise, virtual router is created.
3. Click OK.
4. A warning message about the migration appears; click Yes to proceed.
  
  On clicking Yes, a built-in migration script will migrate your existing configuration to the advanced routing engine. If you select Skip, an empty configuration is created for the advanced routing engine.
  The Migration Configuration displays the color codes that indicate the migration status.
  
  In the Virtual Router, review the STATUS of templates in template stacks. The STATUS should be green for successful migration. Otherwise, take necessary action for any templates that did not pass the migration.
  
  The successful migration automatically converts each virtual router to a corresponding logical router. It is mandatory to commit the configuration and restart the firewall for the changes to take effect.
5. Commit.
6. Select DeviceSetupOperations and Reboot Device.
Select CommitCommit to Panorama and commit your changes.
Commit and push your configuration changes to your managed firewalls. Push to Devices to view the logical routers added in the selected SD-WAN firewalls.
1. Select CommitPush to Devices and Edit Selections.
2. Select Templates and choose the templates stack and template from the list.
3. Enable Force Template Values to overwrite local configuration with the updated template values. Before you use this option, check for overridden values on the firewalls to ensure your commit does not result in any unexpected network outages or issues caused by replacing those overridden values.
4. Click OK and Push to devices.
Log back into the firewall.
Select Network.
Notice the menu items, which are more industry-standard and more detailed than the single item (Virtual Routers) on the legacy menu. Routing includes Logical Routers and Routing Profiles, which include BGP, BFD, OSPF, OSPFv3, RIPv2, Filters, and Multicast.
You must enable Advanced Routing for each template stack individually when you have more than one template stack in your configuration. Repeat Steps
5
through
10
for other template stacks on firewalls that you intend to update for advanced routing.

According to our design requirement, the logical router name must be the same as the virtual router name for the same template when using the advanced routing engine. This means that hubs and branches have always the same router name. When manually creating logical routers rather than using a migration script, you must make sure the logical router name and virtual router name are the same.
Select virtual or logical router in your SD-WAN deployment.
Select PanoramaSD-WANDevices, to add an SD-WAN device (SD-WAN hub or branch firewall) to be managed by the Panorama management server.

In addition to existing configuration options for adding an SD-WAN device, you can now select a logical router (for advanced routing engine) or virtual router (for legacy engine) for a Router Name. It is important that the logical router name and the virtual router name are same for the same template when using the advanced routing engine.

Select the Router Name (logical or virtual router) to use for routing between the SD-WAN hub and branches:
- If the virtual router and logical router names are the same, then the Router Name displays one name.
- If virtual router and logical router names are different, then the Router Name displays both virtual and logical router name. You can select either virtual router (for legacy engine) or logical router (for advanced routing engine) based on your requirement.