VM-Series with Alibaba Cloud CEN Transit Router

cancel
Showing results for 
Show  only  | Search instead for 
Did you mean: 
Announcements
Please sign in to see details of an important advisory in our Customer Advisories area.
L1 Bithead
100% helpful (1/1)
VM-Series with Alibaba Cloud CEN Transit RouterVM-Series with Alibaba Cloud CEN Transit Router
 
VM-series firewalls can be deployed on Alibaba Cloud to protect Internet-facing applications as well as outbound connectivity from VMs deployed on Alibaba Cloud. Inter-VPC communications can also be protected by deploying VM-Series firewalls in an architecture that is similar to the Transit VPC architecture on AWS. Check out Palo Alto Networks' VM-Series Deployment Guide to learn how to set up the VM-Series Firewall on Alibaba Cloud
 

Recently, Alibaba Cloud released a feature called Cloud Enterprise Network - Transit Router (CEN-TR). This feature is similar to AWS’ Transit Gateway. It allows VM-Series to be deployed in a Security VPC to inspect inbound traffic to spoke VPCs attached to it, outbound traffic from spoke VPCs, and East/West traffic between spoke VPCs.

 

CEN-TR Deployment Architecture

 

As shown in the diagram below, the CEN-TR is connected to spoke1-VPC via attachment TR-att-1, spoke2-VPC via attachment TR-att-2 and Security-VPC via attachment TR-att-3.

 

CEN-TR Deployment ArchitectureCEN-TR Deployment Architecture

 

Route tables in the spoke VPCs (Spoke1-RT and Spoke2-RT) are used to route traffic in the spoke VPCs to the CEN-TR via the respective attachments. The attachments from the spoke VPCs are associated with the “CEN-TR-Spoke-RT” route table in the CEN-TR. This route table will route all traffic to the Security-VPC via the attachment TR-att-3.

 

The route table in the Security-VPC that is associated with the Trust subnet (Trust-RT) is used to route all traffic to the Spoke VPCs to the CEN-TR via the attachment TR-att-3. The route table in the Security-VPC that is associated with the CEN-TR subnet (TR-Subnet-RT) is used to route all traffic coming from the CEN-TR to the Trust ENI of the VM-Series firewall. The attachment TR-att-3 from the Security-VPC is associated with the “CEN-TR-Security-RT” route table in the CEN-TR. This route table will route traffic to the respective spoke VPCs.

 

As you can see, this is similar to how the AWS Transit Gateway works. One major difference is that only the VPC attachment is supported by CEN-TR. Having an IPSec tunnel from a VM-Series firewall to the CEN-TR is not supported.

 

In this test, a single AZ is used to show how CEN-TR works. For multiple AZs, CEN-TR can be used together with other VM-Series firewall deployment scenarios to achieve HA. Examples include Alicloud_VM_HA and Alicloud_LB_Sandwich.

 

CEN-TR Configuration

 

From the Alibaba Cloud portal, go to Cloud Enterprise Network to create a CEN instance.

 

Danielma911_1-1630895960826.png

 

Once the CEN instance has been created, click on the CEN instance to access the instance details. From the instance details page, create a Transit Router.

 

Danielma911_2-1630895960841.png

 

After the Transit Router has been created, click on the newly created transit-router instance to access its details.

 

Next, create the attachments to all three VPCs. To create an attachment, go to the “Intra-region Connections” tab. Click on "Create Connection." Enter the region, select the AZ, provide a name for the attachment, and choose the VPC to connect to. Under the advanced settings, uncheck all options. 

 

Danielma911_3-1630895960855.png

 

Now you're ready to create the Transit Router route tables; go to the “Route Table” tab and click “Create Route Table.” Create two route tables: Spoke-RT and Security-RT.

 

Danielma911_4-1630895960853.png

 

After the CEN-TR route tables are created, associate the route tables with the attachments created earlier. Go to the “Route Table Association” tab and click on "Add Association." For Spoke-RT, associate it with the spoke VPC attachments (i.e. TR-Att-1 and TR-Att-2). For Security-RT, associate it with the security VPC attachment (i.e. TR-Att-3).

 

Danielma911_5-1630895960846.png

 

Next, add route entries into the CEN-TR route tables. For Spoke-RT, go to the “Route Entry” tab and click on “Add Route Entry” to add a static default route to point to attachment TR-att-3 (i.e. the next-hop is the Security-VPC).

 

Danielma911_6-1630895960828.png


Similarly for the Security-RT, static routes are added. Instead of a default route, the spoke VPC routes are added.

 

Danielma911_7-1630895960848.png

 

VPC Route Tables

 

From the Alibaba Cloud portal, go to VPC  Route Tables to create VPC route tables. Create the four route tables (Spoke1-RT, Spoke2-RT, Trust-RT, and TR-Subnet-RT) as mentioned earlier in the document, and add the appropriate custom route entries to the route tables. After that, associate the appropriate vSwitch to the route tables.

 

As an example, for the Trust-RT in the Security VPC, it has a custom route to the spoke VPC with a next-hop to attachment TR-Att-3, and it is associated with the Trust subnet in the Security-VPC.

 

Danielma911_8-1630895960819.png

 

 

Danielma911_9-1630895960830.png

 

EIP For Outbound Internet Access

 

For outbound traffic to the Internet, an Elastic IP Address (EIP) can be attached to the Untrust interface of the VM-Series firewall, or a NAT Gateway can be used. In this test, an Elastic IP Address (EIP) is attached to the Untrust interface of the VM-Series firewall.

 

Danielma911_10-1630895960833.png

 

VM-Series Firewall Configuration

 

The Untrust and Trust interfaces of the VM-Series firewall are configured to use DHCP client, with the Untrust interface configured to “Automatically create default route pointing to default gateway provided by server."

 

A static route to the spoke VPCs is added to the VM-Series firewall.

 

Danielma911_11-1630895960851.png


NAT rules are configured for Inbound and Outbound traffic.

 

Danielma911_12-1630895960835.png

 

For Outbound traffic, the SNAT rule will match the source addresses of the servers in the spoke VPCs. The source address will then be SNAT to the private IP address of the Untrust interface.

 

For Inbound traffic, the NAT rules are similar to those used for the LB sandwich design. The NAT rules will have a destination address match on the private IP address of the Untrust interface of the VM-Series firewall as well as the TCP port. Traffic will be forwarded to the spoke1 web server or spoke2 web server depending on the TCP port of the traffic.

 

Security policies are configured to allow inbound, outbound and east/west traffic.

 

Danielma911_13-1630895960852.png

 

Testing Inbound Traffic

 

The web server can be accessed via the EIP and TCP port. As can be seen from the following figures, the client can successfully access the web servers in Spoke1-VPC and Spoke2-VPC.

 

Danielma911_14-1630895960840.png

 

 

Danielma911_15-1630895960844.png

 

The firewall logs show these inbound sessions.

 

Danielma911_16-1630895960862.png

 

Testing Outbound Traffic

 

Accessing the Internet from the servers in Spoke1-VPC and Spoke2-VPC is successful. The source IP address is detected to be the EIP.

 

Danielma911_17-1630895960824.png

 

 

Danielma911_18-1630895960837.png

 

The firewall logs show these outbound sessions.

 

Danielma911_19-1630895960863.png

 

Testing East/West Traffic

 

Accessing the server in Spoke2-VPC from the server in Spoke1-VPC is successful.

 

Danielma911_20-1630895960847.png


The firewall log shows the east/west session.

 

Danielma911_21-1630895960849.png

 

In conclusion, with CEN-TR, VM-Series firewalls can be deployed in a Security VPC to protect inbound, outbound and east/west traffic between a large number of VPCs on Alibaba Cloud.


Authored by: KuangBin Yeu - Consulting Engineer

Rate this article:
  • 5464 Views
  • 0 comments
  • 1 Likes
Register or Sign-in
Labels
Article Dashboard
Version history
Last Updated:
‎09-09-2021 06:37 AM
Updated by: