How to Export Palo Alto Networks Firewall Configuration to a Spreadsheet
Rohit Singla describes how to export Palo Alto configurations into a spreadsheet. Read more …
Sometimes it becomes very important and necessary to have the configured policies, routes, and interfaces in a spreadsheet to be shared with the Design Team, the Audit team and for some other purposes. The below method can help in getting the Palo Alto Configuration in a spreadsheet as and when you require and provides insights into Palo Alto best practices. Here you go:
1. First of all, login to your Palo Alto Firewall and navigate to Device > Setup > Operations and click on Export Named Configuration Snapshot:
2. From the pop-up menu select running-config.xml, and click OK. Save the file to the desired location.
3. To export the Security Policies into a spreadsheet, please do the following steps:
a. Make a copy of the running-config.xml and rename it as policies.xml. We will use more copies of running.xml for more operations later.
b. Open the policies.xml in a notepad++, wordpad, editpadlite kind of editor. Avoid normal notepad. If you don’t have notepad++ or editpadlite, use wordpad (inbuilt in your windows).
c. Search for a keyword <security> including the < and > character:
d. Delete all the text before the tag <security>
e. Search for a keyword </security> including the < and > character:
f. Delete all the text after the tag </security>
g. Now do a find and replace option for keyword <member>, replace <member> with blank (nothing)
h. Now similarly do a find and replace option for keyword </member>, replace
</member> with blank (nothing)
i. Save the file and close it.
j. Open a new Excel Spreadsheet and click on MenuBar DATA > From Other Sources > From XML Data import.
k. From the pop-up window, browse and select the policies.xml file. Click on Open, then click OK and then again click OK.
l. There you go, you have all your policies in a spreadsheet.
m. If you see some alignment issue in the cells, quickly press Ctrl+h (find and replace operation), and replace “ “ (space) with blank(nothing) as below:
n. You will see your policies in an excellent and formatted table.
4. To export AddressObjects , create a copy of running-config.xml and save it as address.xml.
a. Open interfaces.xml and search for tag <address> and delete all the text before this tag.
b. Similarly search for </address> delete all the text after this tag.
c. Save it and repeat steps j,k,l from Policies section.
5. To export Address-Groups, create a copy of running-config.xml and save it as address-group.xml.
a. Open interfaces.xml and search for tag <address-group> and delete all the text before this tag.
b. Similarly search for </address-group> delete all the text after this tag.
c. Save it and repeat steps j,k,l from Policies section.
6. To export PBF policies, create a copy of running-config.xml and save it as pbf.xml.
a. Open interfaces.xml and search for tag <pbf> and delete all the text before this tag.
b. Similarly search for </pbf> delete all the text after this tag.
c. Save it and repeat steps j,k,l from Policies section.
7. To export interfaces, create a copy of running-config.xml and save it as interfaces.xml.
a. Open interfaces.xml and search for tag <interface> and delete all the text before this tag.
b. Similarly search for </interface> delete all the text after this tag.
c. Save it and repeat steps j,k,l from Policies section.
8. To export Zones, create a copy of running-config.xml and save it as zones.xml.
a. Open interfaces.xml and search for tag <zone> and delete all the text before this tag.
b. Similarly search for </zone> delete all the text after this tag.
c. Save it and repeat steps j,k,l from Policies section.
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Rohit Singla is a Security Consultant. He has been working with Palo Alto Network firewalls for about seven years. If you want to contribute as well, click here.