Focus
Focus
Table of Contents

Device Groups

To use Panorama effectively, you have to group the firewalls in your network into logical units called device groups. A device group enables grouping based on network segmentation, geographic location, organizational function, or any other common aspect of firewalls that require similar policy configurations. Using device groups, you can configure policy rules and the objects they reference. You can organize device group hierarchically, with shared rules and objects at the top, and device group-specific rules and objects at subsequent levels. This enables you to create a hierarchy of rules that enforce how firewalls handle traffic. For example, you can define a set of shared rules as a corporate acceptable use policy. Then, to allow only regional offices to access peer-to-peer traffic such as BitTorrent, you can define a device group rule that Panorama pushes only to the regional offices (or define a shared security rule and target it to the regional offices). For the relevant procedures, see Manage Device Groups. The following topics describe device group concepts and components in more detail: