Palo Alto Network’s Next-Generation Firewall Integration with Nile

The Nile Service Block (NSB) connects to one or two upstream Palo Alto Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) appliances, over point-to-point layer 3 links, and pushes all client traffic (north-south or east west) to the NGFW appliance. Such design puts the customer in full control of the NSB traffic, to implement the desired security policies.

The purpose of this document is to assist with the seamless integration between the Nile NSB and the Palo Alto NGFW appliance.

NOTE

Note: It is important to diagram the interface IP assignments. For illustration purposes, this document uses the following interfaces and IP subnets:

PA-1 to GW-1 link: 172.16.7.0/30

PA-1 to GW-2 link: 172.16.7.4/30

PA-2 to GW-1 link: 172.16.7.8/30

PA-2 to GW-2 link: 172.16.7.12/30

ethernets: 1/1 to 1/4 NSB uplinks (only two are needed for a single PAN)

ethernet1/5 LAN (on-prem Servers network)

ethernet1/6 High Availability (HA2)

ethernet1/7 WAN1

ethernet1/8 WAN2

Mgmt HA1

Multiple sections need to be set up on the Palo Alto Next-Generation Firewall:

Before starting, log into the administrator web page of your Palo Alto NGFW appliance.

To define the Internet, LAN, and NSB zones, go to Network g Zones:

Figure 1

NSB

Click on the +Add button (at the bottom of the Zone screen) to create a new zone:

(drop-down menu)

(+ Add button at bottom of Interfaces panel for each.)

Figure 2

Internet

Click on +Add button (at the bottom of the Zone screen) to create another new zone:

Figure 3

LAN Repeat the Add Zones step to create the LAN zone and add the assigned interface 1/5 to it:

Figure 4

Once the above setup steps are complete, the Zones page looks like this:

Figure 5

Management Profile

Go to Network → Network Profiles → Interface Mgmt:

Click on + Add button, and enable the desired services with security concerns in mind. The following screenshots illustrate two profiles: NSB and WAN:

Figure 6

Figure 7

LLDP Profile

Go to Network → Network Profile → LLDP Profile Click on the + Add button:

Figure 8

To set up Interfaces, go to Network → Interfaces → Ethernet:

Two interfaces (2) are needed for a single firewall, and four (4) for an Active-Passive set of two firewalls. This document is using Ethernet1/1 to Ethernet1/4 as the four uplinks to the NSB:

Ethernet1/1:

Click the Interface ethernet1/1, and set the following:

Figure 9

4. IPv4 tab:

a. Type: Static

b. IP: 16.7.1/30

Figure 10

5. Advanced tab:

a. Management Profile: Select the NSB profile.

Figure 11

a. LLDP: Enable LLDP and Select the ‘LLDP enable’ profile

Figure 12

Repeat the same procedure for Ethernet1/2 through Ethernet1/4:

Ethernet1/2: 172.16.7.5/30 Ethernet1/3: 172.16.7.9/30 Ethernet1/4: 172.16.7.13/30

This completes the setup for the four uplink interfaces to the NSB.

In this document, the firewall(s) is/are connected to two ISPs through interfaces Ethernet1/7 and Ethernet1/8, for redundancy purposes.

Ethernet1/7:

Click the Interface ethernet1/7, and set the following:

Figure 13

Ethernet1/8:

Click the Interface ethernet1/8, and set the following:

Figure 14

This setting specifies the interface to a directly-attached server farm, or the core network. It is shown here for completion purposes:

Figure 15

To set up routing on the PAN firewall, go to Network → Virtual Routers.

Figure 16

The virtual router default is used in this document, and all interfaces have already been added in the previous section. Click on “default” link to see the settings:

Figure 17

WAN Routing (static)

Static routing is used on the WAN with two (2) default routes added, for ISP1 and ISP2. ISP1 is the primary and receives a metric of 10. ISP2 acts as a backup with a metric of 100.

Click the ‘Static Routes’ selector in the Virtual Router panel.

Figure 18

Click the ‘+ Add’ button in the pop-up to add 2 static routes as follows:

ISP1:

Figure 19

ISP2:

Figure 20

NSB Routing

Important: For the Nile service to operate correctly, it is critical that the following subnets are routed back by the PAN firewall to the NSB gateways:

Two routing options to the Nile NSB are supported: static or dynamic (OSPF)

Option 1: Static routing with ECMP

In this document, the following subnets:

Therefore, four (4) static routes are added to the aggregated subnet: 172.16.8.0/21, one for each of the downlinks to the Nile Gateways.

Since Nile traffic to the PAN firewall uses flow based ECMP routing through both Nile Gateways, it is important to enable ECMP on the firewall:

1.1 ECMP setup:

Go to Virtual-Router g default g Router Settings g ECMP Select the following:

Figure 21

1.2 Static routes:

Add four (4) equal cost static routes for the aggregated subnet in this example:

Figure 22

1.3 Route validation

Inspect the routing table and forwarding table to validate the static routes to the aggregate subnet 172.16.8.0/21, by clicking More Runtime Stats under Network g Virtual Routers:

Figure 23

Routing table:

Figure 24

Forwarding table:

Figure 25

Option 2: Dynamic routing (OSPF)

2.1 ECMP setup:

The setup is the same as has been defined in the static routing section.

2.2 OSPF setup:

Go to Network g Virtual Routers g default g OSPF Set the following:

Figure 26

Add the interfaces connected to the NSB (ethernet1/1 to ethernet1/4), one by one:

Figure 27

Figure 28

Figure 29

Figure 30

Figure 31

A summary of the virtual router ‘default’ setup is illustrated below:

Figure 32

NOTE

If no aggregation is used, then four (4) equal-cost routes are needed for the NSB, sensors, and client subnets.

By default, Palo Alto Next Gen firewall allows intrazone (within the same zone) traffic and denies / blocks interzone (between two different zones) traffic.

As three zones were created in this document – (1) Internet, (2) NSB and (3) LAN – rules are needed to allow traffic from the LAN and NSB zones to the Internet zone, and between the NSB and LAN zones.

Figure 33

4.1 LAN/NSB Access to the Internet

Go to Policies g Security Click on + Add to create the policy as follows:

4.2 NSB/LAN Access

Go to Policy g Security Click on + Add to create the policy as follows:

NOTE

The above rules are provided as an example; it is up to customers to change them according to the requirements of their security policies.

By default, the Palo Alto Next Gen Firewall does not NAT traffic. Source NAT rules are needed for internal traffic using private addresses to reach the Internet.

Since this document covers a dual ISP environment, two source NAT rules are needed for each ISP.

Go to Policies g NAT Click on + Add to create the Source NAT rules:

Figure 34

4.2 NSB/LAN Access

Figure 35

Figure 36

4.2 NSB/LAN Access Repeat the previous step using interface ethernet1/8, with the Translated Packet tab reflecting the following:

Figure 37

It is important to abide by the Palo Alto prerequisites for Active/Passive HA (high availability), as detailed in the following URL:

https://docs.paloaltonetworks.com/pan-os/9-1/pan-os-admin/high-availability/set-up-activepassive-ha/prerequisites-for-activepassive-ha#id78977437-fe66-4204-9690-5a673fc8dd35

HA Ports

The HA ports could be dedicated or assigned based on the firewall model

In this document the following HA ports are utilized:

Control Link (HA1): Management Data Link (HA2): ethernet1/6

Active Firewall

General Setup

Go to Device → High Availability → General where the setup is divided into sections accessible through their own setup button.

Figure 38

Click the config button within each section to access the settings, starting with the Setup section:

Figure 39

Figure 40

Figure 41

Figure 42

Link and Path Monitoring

This setup defines the failover conditions and could use link and/or path monitoring to determine what causes a PAN firewall to fail over.

This document covers link monitoring of the NSB and WAN interfaces.

Two groups are defined: NSB and WAN

The NSB link monitoring comprises the active interfaces on each firewall, namely:

The WAN link monitoring has both ISP1 and ISP2 interfaces (Dual ISP).

To set up HA link monitoring, go to Device → High Availability → Link and Path Monitoring, Define as shown:

Figure 43

Passive Firewall

General Setup

Repeat the setup steps taken in the Active firewall section to define HA on the Passive firewall paying attention to the following:

Figure 44

Link and Path Monitoring

Figure 45

Click the Commit button on each firewall to save the setup and make it operational.

Once synchronized, the High Availability widget on each firewall should reflect their state and that their setup is in sync:

Figure 46 Figure 47

NOTE

**- The management ports of both firewalls have ip connectivity.