The universally unique identifier (UUID) for
a rule is a 32-character string (based on data such as the network
address and the timestamp of creation) that the firewall or Panorama
assigns to the rule. The UUID uses the format 8-4-4-4-12 (where
8, 4, and 12 represent the number of unique characters separated
by hyphens). UUIDs identify rules for all policy rulebases. You
can also use UUIDs to identify applicable rules in the following log
types: Traffic, Threat, URL Filtering, WildFire Submission, Data
Filtering, GTP, SCTP, Tunnel Inspection, Configuration, and Unified.
Using
the UUID to search for a rule enables you to locate a specific rule
you want to find among thousands of rules that may have similar
or identical names. UUIDs also simplify automation and integration
for rules in third-party systems (such as ticketing or orchestration)
that do not support names.
In some cases, you may need to
generate new UUIDs for existing rulebases. For example, if you want
to export a configuration to another firewall, you need to
regenerate
the UUIDs for the rules as you import the configuration to
ensure there are no duplicate UUIDs. If you regenerate UUIDs, you
are no longer able to track those rules using their previous UUIDs
and the hit data and app usage data for those rules are reset.
The
firewall or Panorama assigns UUIDs when you:
Create
new rules
Clone existing rules
Override the default security rules
Load a named configuration and regenerate UUIDs
Load a named configuration containing new rules that are
not in the running configuration
Upgrade the firewall or Panorama to a PAN-OS 9.0 release
When
you load a configuration that contains rules with UUIDs, the firewall
considers rules to be the same if the rule name, rulebase, and virtual system
all match. Panorama considers rules to be the same if the rule name,
rulebase, and the device group all match.
Keep in mind the
following important points for UUIDs:
If you manage
firewall policy from Panorama, UUIDs are generated on Panorama and
therefore must be pushed from Panorama. If you do not push the configuration
from Panorama prior to upgrading the firewalls to PAN-OS 9.0, the
firewall upgrade will not succeed because it will not have the UUIDs.
In addition, if you are upgrading an HA pair, upon upgrade
to PAN-OS 9.0, each peer independently assigns UUIDs for each policy
rule. Because of this, the peers will show as out of sync until
you sync the configuration ().
If you remove an existing high availability (HA) configuration
after upgrading to PAN-OS 9.0, you must regenerate the UUIDs on
one of the peers () and commit the changes
to prevent UUID duplication.
All rules pushed from Panorama will share the same UUID;
all rules local to a firewall will have different UUIDs. If you
create a rule locally on the firewall after you push the rules from
Panorama to the firewalls, the rule you created locally has its
own UUID.
To replace an RMA Panorama, make sure you Retain
Rule UUIDs when you load the named Panorama configuration snapshot.
If you do not select this option, Panorama removes all previous
rule UUIDs from the configuration snapshot and assigns new UUIDs
to the rules on Panorama, which means it does not retain information
associated with the previous UUIDs, such as the policy rule hit
count.