PAN-OS User-ID Issue and Workaround

[bschaper]

I upgraded to PAN-OS 10.0 yesterday and encountered an unusual bug when pushing out a config to my 3220.  I opened a case, but figured I would post it here as well, but don't expect screenshots.

Symptom:

After the Panorama upgrade a commit to the 3220 was giving the following error:

Need to config WMI account and password for querying Microsoft directory servers

If I switch to WinRM-HTTP(s) I got similar error but referring to missing dns name.

Observations:

After some digging and after verifying I was not crazy and Panorama had the username, password and domain name, I removed the server monitors and was able to push a config.  A quick look on the firewall I noticed that the server monitoring account as empty, and appears that panorama is not pushing the settings correctly.  Firewalls run 9.1.3 currently.

Workaround: 

To resolve the issue, I overrode the User-ID settings on the firewall and added the account info, and just have Panorama pushing the the servers to monitor.  This resolved the issue in my case, but does leave that overrode setting that still needs to be addressed.

Hopefully this helps somebody in case you have the same problem, or if you have another solution to fix the override I would like to hear that.

[bschaper]

So I finally traced this problem back to panorama and template stacking, it appears that the not set setting in the higher template is not allowing the lower template to override it.

In my situation, I have a template that defines some very basic stuff that all firewalls have in a base config, it is the highest template in the list so it applies to all firewalls.  The WMI info in the template below that, but for some reason Panorama was not combining those into the template properly and leaving it blank in the template stack view.

I was able to just reorder the templates to fix it, and that may work in some situtations.

[vsys_remo]

Another way probably would be to delete the user-id configuration from the upper template completely (at least if it is no longer used). Then the configuration from the template that you wanted to use should be applied. (In cases like this, deleting this from cli could help)

[bschaper]

You would be correct, that would have been a solution as well.  But the problem is a bit mode buggy.  The top policy never had that setting yet it was overriding it.  10 other policies also had settings in User-ID as well.  Even after committing to panorama, I am seeing the settings present even though they are not.

But you are correct.  Somehow during the 10.0.0 upgrade Panorama decided the empty settings are valid settings in the template and using them.  From simplistic view it is as if, maybe once in the past they had a user and password, that was later removed and placed in another template.   The Palo Alto saw the empty string as a blank setting and left it in the config.

[vsys_remo]

as you only changed the template order, the 'setting" should still be there, so if your still interested you could check in CLI if something is there. At least you have a solution for your environment 😉