HDD storage options on PA-5000

series
Configuring RAID and disk backup on PA-5000 series
April 2011

Palo Alto Networks

232 E. Java Dr.
Sunnyvale, CA 94089
408.738.7700
www.paloaltonetworks.com

Table of Contents
Overview............................................................................................................................................. 3
HDD upgrade procedure .................................................................................................................... 3
Configuring RAID with two 120GB HDD......................................................................................... 3
Upgrading from the standard 120GB to 240GB ............................................................................. 3
Configuring RAID with two 240GB HDD......................................................................................... 6
Configuring RAID with 120GB and 240GB HDD ............................................................................ 6
Swapping drives between firewalls .................................................................................................... 8
Summary ............................................................................................................................................ 9

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Overview
The PA-5000 Series of enterprise firewalls is designed to protect data centers, large enterprise
Internet gateways, and service provider environments where traffic demands dictate predictable
firewall and threat prevention throughput. Traffic flows of up to 20 Gbps are effectively protected
with more than 40 processors distributed across four functional areas: networking, security, content
inspection and management.
All PA-5000 series are equipped with 2 slots for SSD HDD. These models ship standard with a
single 120GB SSD drive, which is field upgradeable. The following options of HDD is currently
available on the PA-5000 series
Dual RAID 120GB SSDs, or
Single 240 GB SSD or
Dual RAID 240GB SSDs.
Dual RAID 120GB and 240GB SSDs
.

HDD upgrade procedure

All PA-5000 series are shipped standard with a single 120GB SSD drive. In this section, we will
discuss about the different upgrade options and procedures available on the PA- 5000 series.
RAID 1 can be configured on the systems with two HDD.
Important: The HDD drives are not hot swappable. Ensure the firewall is powered off before
changing the drives

Configuring RAID with two 120GB HDD

In order to configure RAID with standard 120GB HDD, power down the system, insert the second
drive into the disk bay and power up the system. The system automatically does the data mirror in
the background. Use the command show system raid detail to view the HDD status

Upgrading from the standard 120GB to 240GB

In order to upgrade from the standard 120GB HDD to 240GB, power down the system and insert
the blank 240GB drive into the second drive bay. Power up the system. The system boots up and
recognizes the second drive. The system then boots up in the maintenance mode. From the menu
option select RAID.

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The following screen shows the information about the available HDD and data migration options.

In order to migrate from 120GB HDD to 240GB HDD, choose migrate drive 1 -> 2 option.
This will initiate the migration process.

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The RAID migration status screen shown below is displayed once the migration is completed.

At this time, power off the system, remove the old drive and power on the system. The new 240GB
drive can be left in the second disk bay. Once the device boots up, you can verify the disk space to
confirm the 240GB HDD is use

admin@PA-5060> show system disk-space

Filesystem
/dev/md2
/dev/md5
/dev/md6
tmpfs
/dev/md8

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Size
3.8G
7.6G
3.8G
1.8G
198G

Used Avail Use% Mounted on

1.2G 2.5G 32% /
562M 6.6G
8% /opt/pancfg
401M 3.2G 11% /opt/panrepo
37M 1.7G
3% /dev/shm
189M 188G
1% /opt/panlogs

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Configuring RAID with two 240GB HDD

After migrating from the 120GB HDD to 240GB HDD, you can install another 240GB HDD in the
system. In order to configure RAID with standard 240GB HDD, power down the system, insert the
second drive into the disk bay and power up the system. The system automatically does the data
mirror in the background. Use the command show system raid detail to view the HDD status

Configuring RAID with 120GB and 240GB HDD

The system supports configuring RAID between disks of different sizes. In this case the 240GB
HDD will be partitioned to use only 120GB of its capacity, loosing half its capacity. In order to set
up RAID between the standard 120GB HDD and 240GB, power down the system and insert the
blank 240GB drive into the second drive bay. Power up the system. The system boots up
recognizes the second drive. The system then boots up in the maintenance mode. From the menu
option select RAID

From the resulting screen choose RAID auto setup

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Once the RAID setup is completed, you must select a primary disk.

Choose the back option to setup the primary disk.

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Either one of the disk can be selected as the primary disk. The primary disk setting determines the
source from which data will be copied from in the RAID setup. Once the primary disk is setup,
reboot the device for the changes to take effect.

Use the show system raid command to view the RAID status.

admin@PA-5060> show system raid

Overall RAID status

Good
-----------------------------------------------------------------------Drive status
Disk id 1
Present
Disk id 2
Present
admin@PA-5060>

Swapping drives between firewalls

The sequence of steps required to swap HDD from one PA-5000 to another is listed below.
The firewalls must be powered off before you perform this swapping the drives
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Remove all SSD drives from system #1

Insert all SSD drive to system #2
Power on system #2
System #2 may reboot once during the first boot with the new drives
System #2 will come up to its normal login prompt
Perform license migration for the new serial number

NOTE: Drive should always be moved as a group. So, if the original system has two drives, they
should be moved together.

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Summary
The fundamental architecture of Palo Alto Networks next-generation firewalls is provide network
security by enabling enterprises to see and control applications, users, and content not just ports,
IP addresses, and packets using three unique identification technologies: App-ID, User-ID, and
Content-ID. These features are complimented by robust hardware which is designed to provide
separation of control plane and data plane This separation ensures highly available management,
high speed logging and route updates, while the dataplane does all the security processing.

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