Manually Integrate the VM-Series with a Gateway Load Balancer
Complete the following procedure to manually
integrate your VM-Series firewall on AWS with a GWLB.
If
you associate VPC endpoints to an interface or subinterfaces via
user data while bootstrapping and your bootstrap.xml file does not
include the interface configuration, you can configure the interfaces
after the firewall boots up.
All VM-Series
firewall interfaces must be assigned an IPv4 address when deployed
in a public cloud environment. IPv6 addresses are not supported.
- Set up the security VPC. See the AWS documentation for more information about creating your security VPC.
- Create two subnets—one for management and one for data.
- Create two security groups—one for firewall management and one for data.
- The management subnet security groups should allow https and ssh for management access.
- Ensure that the security group(s) in your data VPC allows GENEVE-encapsulated packets (UDP port 6081).
- If your deployment includes a transit gateway and traffic that will move between VPCs, you must enable appliance mode on security VPC attachment.
The target group of the GWLB cannot use HTTP for health checks because the VM-Series firewall does not allow access with an unsecured protocol. Instead, use another protocol such as HTTPS or TCP. - Launch the VM-Series firewall.
- On the EC2 Dashboard, clickLaunch Instance.
- Select the VM-Series AMI. To get the AMI, see Obtain the AMI.
- Launch the VM-Series firewall on an EC2 instance.
- Choose theEC2 instance typefor allocating the resources required for the firewall, and clickNext. See VM-Series System Requirements, for resource requirements.
- Select the security VPC.
- Select the data subnet to attach to eth0.
- SelectLaunch as an EBS-optimized instance.
- Add another network interface for eth1 to act as the management interface after the interface swap. Swapping interfaces requires a minimum of two ENIs (eth0 and eth1).
- Expand the Network Interfaces section and clickAdd Deviceto add another network interface.Make sure that your VPC has more than one subnet so that you can add additional ENIs at launch.If you launch the firewall with only one ENI:
- The interface swap command will cause the firewall to boot into maintenance mode.
- You must reboot the firewall when you add the second ENI.
- Expand the Advanced Details section and in theUser datafield enter as text to perform the interface swap during launch.mgmt-interface-swap=enableplugin-op-commands=aws-gwlb-inspect:enableIf you set the target type to the IP address of a specific interface on the VM-Series firewall, you do not need to enable management interface swap.
- Accept the defaultStoragesettings. The firewall uses volume type SSD (gp2).
- If prompted, select an appropriateSSDoption for your setup.
- (Optional)Tagging. Add one or more tags to create your own metadata to identify and group the VM-Series firewall. For example, add aNametag with aValuethat helps you remember that the ENI interfaces have been swapped on this VM-Series firewall.
- Select the dataSecurity Groupfor eth0 (data interface). Enable traffic on UDP port 6081.If you enable health checks to the firewall, you cannot use HTTP. Instead, use another protocol such as HTTPS or TCP.
- SelectReview and Launch. Review that your selections are accurate and clickLaunch.
- Select an existing key pair or create a new one, and acknowledge the key disclaimer.This key pair is required for first time access to the firewall. It is also required to access the firewall in maintenance mode.
- Download and save the private key to a safe location; the file extension is.pem. You cannot regenerate this key, if lost.It takes 5-7 minutes to launch the VM-Series firewall. You can view the progress on the EC2 Dashboard.When the process completes, the VM-Series firewall displays on theInstancespage of the EC2 Dashboard.
- Attach the management security group to eth1 (management interface). Allow ssh and https. See the AWS Documentation for more information.
- Create and assign an Elastic IP address (EIP) to the ENI used for management access (eth1) to the firewall.
- SelectElastic IPsand clickAllocate New Address.
- SelectEC2-VPCand clickYes, Allocate.
- Select the newly allocated EIP and clickAssociate Address.
- Select theNetwork Interfaceand thePrivate IP addressassociated with the management interface and clickYes, Associate.
- Configure a new administrative password for the firewall.On the VM-Series firewall CLI, you must configure a unique administrative password before you can access the web interface of the firewall. To log in to the CLI, you require the private key that you used to launch the firewall.
- Use the EIP to SSH into the Command Line Interface (CLI) of the VM-Series firewall. You will need the private key that you used or created above and using the user nameadminto access the CLI.If you are using PuTTY for SSH access, you must convert the .pem format to a .ppk format. See https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/putty.html
- Enter the following command to log in to the firewall:ssh-i<private_key.pem>admin@<public-ip_address>
- Configure a new password, using the following command and follow the onscreen prompts:configureset mgt-config users admin password
- If you have a BYOL that needs to be activated, set the DNS server IP address so that the firewall can aceess the Palo Alto Networks licensing server. Enter the following command to set the DNS server IP address:set deviceconfig system dns-setting servers primary<ip_address>
- Commit your changes with the command:commit
- Terminate the SSH session.
- Configure the dataplane network interface as a Layer 3 interface on the firewall.On the application servers within the VPC, define the dataplane network interface of the firewall as the default gateway.
- Using a secure connection (https) from your web browser, log in using the EIP address and password you assigned during initial configuration (https://<Elastic_IP address>). You will see a certificate warning; that is okay. Continue to the web page.
- Select.NetworkInterfacesEthernet
- Click the link forethernet 1/1and configure as follows:
- Interface Type:Layer3
- On theConfigtab, assign the interface to the default router.
- On theConfigtab, expand theSecurity Zonedrop-down and selectNew Zone. Define a new zone and then clickOK.
- On theIPv4tab, selectDHCP Client.If using DHCP, selectDHCP Client; the private IP address that you assigned to the ENI in the AWS management console will be automatically acquired.
- On the Advanced tab, create a management profile to allow health checks to be received by the firewall.
- ClickCommit. Verify that the link state for the interface is up.
- Create security policies to allow/deny traffic.Because the VM-Series treats traffic as intrazone when integrated with a GWLB, a default intrazone rule allows all traffic. It is a best practice to override the default intrazone rule with a deny action for traffic that does not match any of your other security policy rules.
- Selecton the web interface of the firewall.PoliciesSecurity
- ClickAdd, and specify the security zones, applications and logging options that you would like to execute to restrict and audit traffic traversing through the network.
- Committhe changes on the firewall.
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