Always remember to save your config!As part of my new job I’ve taken on the management of a Palo Alto PA-3020, on my list of things to do…update the software/firmware on it. The update process its self is pretty simple in that you identify the version you are going to update to, download it, install it and then reboot the firewall at a time that will cause the least distribution to your users.

It will also be worth taking a save of your current running configuration – this can be done by going Device > Setup > Operations and Saving a named configuration snapshot and then exporting it.

At first glance there does not seem to be a way to schedule the reboot (for say 3am – something I particularly liked on my Smoothwall firewall) so for the time being I’ll have to deal with late night reboots.

Anyway the good bit! To upgrade from 6.0.6 to 6.1.0 took 4 minutes to then upgrade from 6.1.0 to 6.1.5 took 5 minutes 30 seconds.

For more information on the upgrade process from Palo Alto themselves visit this link – https://live.paloaltonetworks.com/docs/DOC-2092.

14/11/2018 Update

It’s firmware update time again, this time going from 7.1.14 to 7.1.21, from pressing restart it took about 2 minutes 25 seconds for a ping to the firewalls management interface to come back, 4 minutes 20 seconds for the web interface to come back and then 5 minutes 25 seconds (in total) for internet connectivity to be restored.

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