Replacing a Palo

[Shawverr]

Hello -

We had one of our Palos die on us, we have the replacement and I have read this document: 

https://knowledgebase.paloaltonetworks.com/KCSArticleDetail?id=kA10g000000ClHFCA0

But, I'm hoping someone on here can give me some real world experience tips and tricks or got-ya's.

Basically we have a pair Palo1 and Palo2.  Palo1 is the one that died and we are running on Palo2.  What is the best way to get the new Palo1 up, running and in sync with Palo2?

Thanks in advance. 

[BruceBennett]

I have had to replace 2 firewalls and the doc is pretty good. I skipped over the backup portion because I have regular backups to work with.

The biggest gotcha I ran into was making sure not to overwrite the good config with the blank one when syncing the firewall configs, I have done that. The backups do make that easier to recover from, but it is an outage that you did not plan for.

The second pain was transferring the licenses. I did lean on PAN Support a little for that the first time. The second time was a bit easier.

[Shawverr · Accepted solution]

Basic steps in case anyone comes across this post:

Transfer license && Re-serial the device
NTP/DNS
Interface IP
Add Panorama IP
Add it to device group
Update apps
Download Software versions
Install software versions
Download config
Upload Config
    Modify hostname
    Modify management interface
    Modify HA interfaces
Verify Policies & etc look right
Commit Changes
Connect HA cable 1
    Confirm its up/green
Connect HA cable 2
    Confirm its up/green
Connect other cables
    Confirm Status
Download Global Protect