Deploy the Palo Alto Networks NGFW Service

Select
Networking and Security
Installation
Service Deployments
.
Click
New Service Deployment
(green plus icon), and select the service definition for the Palo Alto Networks next generation firewall you want to deploy,
Palo Alto Networks NGFW
service in this example. Click
Next
.

Select the
Datacenter
and the cluster(s) on which the service will be deployed. One instance of the firewall will be deployed on each host in the selected cluster(s).
Select the datastore from which to allocate disk space for the firewall. Select one of the following options depending on your deployment:
If you have allocated shared storage for the cluster, select an available shared datastore.
If you have not allocated shared storage for the cluster, select the
Specified-on-host
option. Be sure to select the storage on each ESXi host in the cluster. Also select the network that will be used for the management traffic on the VM-Series firewall.

Select the port group that provides management network traffic access to the firewall.
Select the IP address pool assignment.
Use IP Pool
(Define an IP Address Pool) from which to assign a management IP address for each firewall when it is being deployed.
Use DHCP
on the management interface.
If you use an IP pool, on deployment, the display name for the VM-Series firewall on Panorama includes the hostname of the ESXi host. For example: PA-VM:10.5.1.120.
If you use DHCP, the display name for the VM-Series firewall does not include the name of the ESXi host.
Review the configuration and click
Finish
.

Verify that the NSX-V Manager reports the
Installation Status
as
Successful
. This process can take a while; click the
More tasks
link on vCenter to monitor the progress of the installation.

If the installation of VM-Series fails, the error message is displayed on the Installation Status column. You can also use the
Tasks
tab and the
Log Browser
on the NSX-V Manager to view the details for the failure and refer to the VMware documentation for troubleshooting steps.
Verify that the firewall is successfully deployed.
On the vCenter server, select

Hosts and Clusters

to check that every host in the cluster(s) has one instance of the firewall.

View the management IP address(es) and the PAN-OS version running on the firewall directly from vCenter server. VMware Tools is bundled with the PAN-OS software image and is automatically enabled when you launch the VM-Series firewall.

With VMware Tools, you can view resource utilization metrics on hard disk, memory, and CPU, and use these metrics to enable alarms or actions on the vCenter server. The heartbeats allow you to verify that the firewall is live and trigger actions to ensure high availability. You can also perform a graceful shutdown and restart of the firewall using the power off function on vCenter.


Access the Panorama web interface to make sure that the VM-Series firewalls are connected and synchronized with Panorama.
Select
Panorama
Managed Devices
to verify that the firewalls are connected and synchronized.
If the firewall gets its IP address from an IP Pool, the
Display Name
for the firewall includes the hostname of the ESXi server on which it is deployed, for example PA-VM:ESX1.Sydney. If the firewall gets a DHCP assigned IP address, the hostname of the ESXi server does not display.
If the ESXi server hostname is longer than 32 characters, the hostname will not be displayed in Panorama. Instead, only
PA-VM
is displayed.

Click Commit, and select Commit Type as
Panorama
.
A periodic Panorama commit is required to ensure that Panorama saves the device serial numbers to configuration. If you reboot Panorama without committing the changes, the managed devices will not connect back to Panorama; although the Device Group will display the list of devices, the devices will not display in
Panorama
Managed Devices
.
Verify that the capacity license is applied and apply any additional licenses that you have purchased. At a minimum, you must activate the support license on each firewall.
When Panorama does not have internet access (Offline), you must manually license each firewall, and then add the serial number of the firewall to Panorama so that it is registered as a managed device, and can receive the template stack and device group settings from Panorama. See Activate the License for the VM-Series Firewall for VMware NSX for more information.
Select
Panorama
Device Deployment
Licenses
to verify that the VM-Series capacity license is applied.

To apply additional licenses on the VM-Series firewalls:
Click

Activate

on

Panorama

Device Deployment

Licenses

.

Find or filter for the firewall, and in the

Auth Code

column, enter the authorization code for the license to activate. Only one authorization code can be entered at a time, for each firewall.


Click
Activate
, and verify that the result of the license activation was successful.
(
Optional
) Upgrade the PAN-OS version on the VM-Series firewalls, see Upgrade the PAN-OS Software Version (VM-Series for NSX).
Add guest VMs to the right security groups for traffic from those VMs to be redirected to the VM-Series firewall.
Log in to vCenter.
Select
Networking & Security
Service Composer
Security Groups
.
Highlight the security group to which you want to assign guest VMs and click the
Edit Security Group
icon.
Select
Define dynamic membership
and click the + icon.
Click
Add
.
Define the dynamic membership criteria that the guest VMs must meet to be part of the selected security group. The criteria you use depends on your network deployment. For example, you might choose to group VMs by an Entity such as Logical Switch or Distributed Port Group.

Click
Finish
.
Repeat this procedure for each security group that should have its traffic redirected to the VM-Series firewall.