Manually Integrate the VM-Series with a Gateway Load Balancer

1. 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 groups 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 can’t 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.
2. Launch the VM-Series firewall.

   1. On the EC2 Dashboard, click Launch Instance.
   2. Select the Palo Alto VM-Series AMI. To get the AMI, see Obtain the AMI.
   3. Launch the VM-Series firewall on an EC2 instance.

      1. Choose the EC2 instance type for allocating the resources required for the firewall, and click Next. See VM-Series System Requirements, for resource requirements.
      2. Select the security VPC.
      3. Select the data subnet to attach to eth0.
      4. 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 click Add Device to add another network interface and configure Management subnet to this 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.
           • Reboot the firewall when you add the second ENI.
         • Expand the Advanced Details section and in the User data field enter as text to perform the interface swap during launch.
           mgmt-interface-swap=enable
           plugin-op-commands=aws-gwlb-inspect:enable
           If you set the target type to the IP address of a specific interface on the VM-Series firewall, you don’t need to enable management interface swap.

      5. Accept the default Storage settings. The firewall uses volume type SSD (gp2).
      6. If prompted, select an appropriate SSD option for your setup.
      7. (Optional) Tagging. Add one or more tags to create your own metadata to identify and group the VM-Series firewall. For example, add a Name tag with a Value that helps you remember that the ENI interfaces have been swapped on this VM-Series firewall.
      8. Select the data Security Group for eth0 (data interface). Enable traffic on UDP port 6081.
         If you enable health checks to the firewall, you can’t use HTTP. Instead, use another protocol such as HTTPS or TCP.
      9. Select Review and Launch. Review that your selections are accurate and click Launch.
      10. 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's also required to access the firewall in maintenance mode.
      11. Download and save the private key to a safe location; the file extension is .pem. You can’t 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 the Instances page of the EC2 Dashboard.
3. Attach the management security group to eth1 (management interface). Allow SSH and HTTPS. See the AWS Documentation for more information.
4. Create and assign an Elastic IP address (EIP) to the ENI used for management access (eth1) to the firewall.

   1. Select Elastic IPs and click Allocate New Address.
   2. Select EC2-VPC and click Yes, Allocate.
   3. Select the newly allocated EIP and click Associate Address.
   4. Select the Network Interface and the Private IP address associated with the management interface and click Yes, Associate.
5. 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.

   1. 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 username admin to access the CLI.

      If you're 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
   2. Enter the following command to log in to the firewall:

      ssh-i <private_key.pem> admin@<public-ip_address>
   3. Configure a new password, using the following command and follow the onscreen prompts:

      configure

      set mgt-config users admin password
   4. If you have a BYOL that needs to be activated, set the DNS server IP address so that the firewall can access 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>
   5. Commit your changes with the command:

      commit
   6. Terminate the SSH session.
6. 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.

   1. Using a secure connection (HTTPS) from your web browser, login using the Elastic IP Address and password you assigned during initial configuration (https://<Elastic_IP address>). You will see a certificate warning; that’s okay. Continue to the webpage.
   2. Select NetworkInterfacesEthernet.
   3. Click the link for ethernet 1/1 and configure as follows:

      • Interface Type: Layer3
      • On the Config tab, assign the interface to the default virtual router.
      • On the Config tab, expand the Security Zone drop-down and select New Zone. Define a new zone and leave the remaining fields with default values and then click OK.
      • On the IPv4 tab, select DHCP Client.
        If using DHCP, select DHCP 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 enable HTTP service as part of management profile creation and allow Health check probes from GWLB.
      • (optional) On the IPv6 tab, select Enable IPv6 on this Interfaceand select DHCPv6 Client.

        The VM-Series for AWS behind a GWLB only supports IPv6 as part of AWS Dualstack, meaning that clients communicate with load balancers using both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. IPv6 only is not supported on the AWS GWLB. See AWS documentation for more information.

        Additionally, you must create a security policy that allows IPv6 traffic.
   4. Click Commit. Verify that the link state for the interface is up.
7. 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.

   1. Select PoliciesSecurity on the web interface of the firewall.
   2. Click Add, and specify the security zones, applications and logging options that you would like to execute to restrict and audit traffic traversing through the network.
8. Commit the changes on the firewall.