Use Case: Shared Security Policies on Dedicated Compute Infrastructure

If you are a Managed Service Provider who needs to secure a large enterprise (tenant) with multiple departments (sub-tenants), and each tenant requires dedicated compute infrastructure and security policy rules, you need to create a service definition for each tenant.

In this use case, each tenant—Oak and Maple— has a dedicated ESXi cluster. And each tenant has sub-tenants—Dev, QA, and Prod—whose workloads are deployed in the cluster. You need to define two service definitions to allow the VM-Series firewalls for each tenant to have Security policies for their respective ESXi clusters. The service definition for each tenant includes multiple zones (with corresponding virtual wire subinterface pairs) for isolating traffic from each sub-tenant. Each zone is mapped to a service profile on the NSX-V Manager, which allows the firewall to distinguish traffic from the virtual machines for each sub-tenant and to enforce zone-based security policy rules within the common set of policy rules for the tenant. Zone-based policies in combination with the Dynamic Address groups also allow you to secure sub-tenants who may have overlapping networks, and hence have duplicate IP addresses. To uniquely identify virtual machines assigned to each sub-tenant and successfully enforce policy, the NSX-V Manager provides the service profile and security group to which a virtual machine belongs as match criteria in dynamic address groups on Panorama. For more information, see Policy Enforcement using Dynamic Address Groups.

You can also configure role-based access control using access domains on Panorama. Access domains allow you to control administrative access to specific device groups (to manage policies and objects) and template stacks (to manage network and device settings), so that each tenant administrator can manage the configuration for their VM-Series firewalls. Role-based access also allows you to limit log visibility for the respective tenant only.

1. Enable Communication Between the NSX-V Manager and Panorama.
   This is one-time task and is required if you have not enabled access between the NSX-V Manager and Panorama.
2. Create Template(s) and Device Group(s) on Panorama.
   1. Log in to the Panorama web interface.
   2. Select PanoramaTemplates to add template stacks. This use case has two template stacks named NSX-Template-MAPLE and NSX-Template-OAK.
   3. Select PanoramaDevice Groups and add device groups. This use case has two device groups named NSX-DG-OAK and NSX-DG-MAPLE.
   4. Create NSX-V service profile zones within each template stack. To isolate traffic for each tenant in this use case, you need three zones for each tenant.
      1. Select NetworkZones.
      2. Select the correct template stack in the Template drop-down.
      3. Select Add and enter a zone Name. For example, Tenant1.
      4. Sets the interface Type to Virtual Wire.
      5. Click OK.
      6. Repeat the steps a-e to add additional zones for each sub-tenant.
      7. Verify that the zones are attached to the correct template stack.

   5. Create a service profile zone for each other template stack.
3. Create the Service Definitions on Panorama.
   1. Select PanoramaVMwareNSX-VService Definitions.
   2. Select Add. Fill in the details for the service definition for each tenant. In this example, the two service definitions are Palo Alto Networks - Maple and Palo Alto Networks - Oak.

   3. Click Commit, and select Panorama as the Commit Type to save the changes to the running configuration on Panorama.
4. Create Security Groups and Steering Rules.
   1. Select ObjectsAddress Groups and Set Up Dynamic Address Groups on Panorama for each tenant’s virtual machines. For example, this use case has two security groups per tenant; one security group for the web servers and the other security group for the application servers.

   2. Select PoliciesSecurityPre Rules to set up security policy rules for sending traffic to the VM-Series firewall.
   3. Select PanoramaVMwareNSX-VSteering Rules and click Auto-Generate Steering Rules.
   4. Commit your changes

5. Prepare the ESXi Host for the VM-Series Firewall
   The ESXi hosts in the cluster must have the necessary NSX-V components that allow the NSX-V firewall and the VM-Series firewall to work together. The NSX-V Manager will install the components— the Ethernet Adapter Module (.eam) and the SDK —required to deploy the VM-Series firewall.
6. Deploy the Palo Alto Networks NGFW Service
   1. Select Networking and SecurityInstallationService Deployments.
   2. 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 Test 1 in this example, make your selections and click Finish.
   3. Verify that the NSX-V Manager reports the Installation Status as Successful.

   4. Verify that the VM-Series firewall is successfully deployed.
      1. On the vCenter server, select Hosts and Clusters to check that every host in each cluster has one instance of the firewall.
      2. 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.
7. Apply Security Policies to the VM-Series Firewall
   1. Create dynamic address groups for each sub-tenant on Panorama. The dynamic address group(s) match on the name of the security group(s) you defined on the NSX-V Manager.
      1. On Panorama, select ObjectsAddress Groups.
      2. Select a Device Group from the drop-down and click Add.
      3. Add a Name for the address group and set Type as Dynamic and Add Match Criteria. For ease of managing these groups, use the same name for the dynamic address group as that of the security group on the NSX-V Manager.

      4. Create the dynamic address groups for the sub-tenants for the other tenant, Oak in this example.
   2. On Panorama, create Security policies and use the dynamic address groups as source or destination address objects in security policy rules and push it to the firewalls.
      1. Select PoliciesSecurityPre Rules.
      2. Select a Device Group from the drop-down and click Add.
      3. Create rules for each sub-tenant. Make sure to keep the source and destination zone the same in a policy rule. To ensure that only the application that is running on the server is allowed, allow the service on the application-default port only.
         This use case has the following policy rules for the tenant Maple:

   3. Select the other Device Group from the drop-down and create the Security policies for the each sub-tenant for the other tenant, Oak in this example.
   4. Click Commit, and select Commit Type as Device Groups. Select the device groups, NSX-DG-OAK and NSX-DG-MAPLE in this example and click OK.
      The commit pushes the Security policies to the firewalls that belong to each device group, and they can enforce policy on the traffic redirected by the NSX-V Manager.
8. Verify that traffic from each tenant is secured.
   1. On Panorama, go to MonitorLogsTraffic and MonitorLogsThreat to view the Traffic logs and Threat logs. Select the device group for a tenant and sort on the Zone name for full visibility in to traffic from each sub-tenant.
   2. On Panorama, use the ACC for visibility into traffic patterns and actionable information on threats. Use the widgets and filters to interact with the data on the ACC.
   3. On the VM-Series firewall, select ObjectsAddress Groups to view the IP address for the members of each Dynamic Address Group.

9. (Optional) Enable role-based access for tenant administrators to manage the configuration and policies for the VM-Series firewalls.
   1. Create an access domain. An access domain allows you to restrict admin access to a specific device group and template stack. In this example, you create two access domains and restrict access to the device group and template stack for the respective tenant.
   2. Configure an admin role for Device Group and Template role and allow the administrator to manage the access domain. The administrator can only manage the firewalls that belong to the access domain.
   3. Create an administrative account and associate the access domain and admin role with the account.