Panorama VM is misaligned.

[plim01]

Hi everyone,

I have installed the Panorama from the OVF file that Palo Alto provide. But when the VM is deployed, it is misaligned. Did anyone solve this issue already?I have tried to align it with MBRAlign in ESX, but after that the alignment the VM will not startup anymore.

Does anyone have any idea how to solve this?

[mikand]

Perhaps you should buy the M100 box and then dont have to think about if its aligned or not 😉

On the other hand hopefully the QA testings will be worth waiting for (given the history for previous oopsies regarding QA and PaloAlto).

[eugenep]

Here is how we aligned our panorama vm.

1. Deploy the OVF as per instructions found in Chapter 12 of the Palo Alto Networks Administrator's Guide Release 5.0.
2. Upgrade the Virtual Hardware. (Only if needed in your environment)
   
3. Change SCSI Controller Type to VMware Paravirtual.
4. Align VM partitions using mbralign.
5. Delete the backup files created by mbralign.
6. Boot into linux rescue CD. (I used CentOS)
   
7. Copy grub from rescue cd into file system
8. Fix the GRUB as per belo steps
   
   1. Type the command chroot /mnt/sysimage
   2. Type the command grub. At the grub prompt enter the following three commands:
      root (hd0,0)
setup (hd0)
quit
9. Exit and Power off the VM.
10. Change SCSI Controller Type back to BusLogic Parallel.
11. Start the VM.
12. Login using admin/admin.
13. Update the IP address of the VM
    configureset deviceconfig system ip-address <ip address> netmask <netmast> default-gateway <gateway ip address>.commitexit
14. Configure the rest via the Web UI.

[mikand]

Will this workaround survive a Panorama update?

[plim01]

Palo Alto engineer, is this workaround supported?

[eugenep]

While I haven't performed an update, I don't see how it will not survive one. Once you're VM is aligned, on and working, you can do whatever you want in there.

Thanks

[eugenep]

I don't know if you'll get an official response from PAN, when I contacted support about this a couple of months ago, first they didn't know what vm alignment was, and secondly as mschuricht similarly stated, performance of the VM itself was not being affected so they didn't see the need to help me with getting it aligned.

[mschuricht]

This will not be an officially supported method of alignment.

[plim01]

Eugenep,

I have the same issue with PAN Support when i reported the issue. they don't know what vm alignment is. on the other hand it is a Netapp storage issue, so i can understand that SUpport don't know or is not interested in it since the VM will work.

[SabreAce33]

I don't really look at this as a NetApp issue.  I can re-align all my other network and security VM appliances without a problem.