Running Palo Alto Firewall in Containerlab

Running Palo Alto Firewall in Containerlab

Hi all, in this quick blog post, let's look at how to run Palo Alto firewalls in Containerlab. If you've been following me for a while, you might know that I've started using Containerlab more often in my projects. If you're new to Containerlab or need a quick recap, check out my other introductory post below. Now, let's dive in.

Containerlab - Creating Network Labs Can’t be Any Easier
What if I tell you that all you need is just a YAML file with just a bunch of lines to create a Network Lab that can run easily on your laptop? I’ll walk you through what Containerlab is
Running Palo Alto Firewall in ContainerlabPacketswitchSuresh Vina
Running Palo Alto Firewall in Containerlab

boxen or vrnetlab

Palo Alto doesn't provide a containerized VM image (not CN-Series), it only has a VM-based image. You can create a container from this VM image using two methods. The official documentation recommends using 'boxen' to generate a container image from the VM. However, I chose to use the vrnetlab project instead.

Creating a containerized image using vrnetlab

First things first, download the VM image (qcow2) from the Palo Alto support portal. You might need a valid support contract to access this image. For this Continue reading

NB477: Arista Assembles Switch-Based Microperimeters; FCC Wants More Money for Telcos Dumping Huawei Gear

Take a Network Break! This week we cover a new microsegmentation offering from Arista, new GenAI assistants from Fortinet, and a GenAI firewall from Versa Networks to monitor and report on how organizations are using generative AI tools and applications. AWS will stop selling VMware Cloud on AWS (but you can still get it through... Read more »

Tech Bytes: Real-Time Network Performance Monitoring with NetBeez (Sponsored)

Network monitoring is growing increasingly complicated. Companies are facing more distributed applications and more remote employees. NetBeez, our sponsor today, is here to talk about how they monitor network performance in real time for the campus, WAN, and more. From proactively testing networks after configuration changes to identifying how well a worker’s laptop is connecting... Read more »

Famous Last Words: I’m Too Stupid for That

Some networking vendors realized that one way to gain mindshare is to make their network operating systems available as free-to-download containers or virtual machines. That’s the right way to go; I love their efforts and point out who went down that path whenever possible1 (as well as others like Cisco who try to make our lives miserable).

However, those virtual machines better work out of the box, or you’ll get frustrated engineers who will give up and never touch your warez again, or as someone said in a LinkedIn comment to my blog post describing how Junos vPTX consistently rejects its DHCP-assigned IP address: “If I had encountered an issue like this before seeing Ivan’s post, I would have definitely concluded that I am doing it wrong.”2

Read more …

Famous Last Words: I’m Too Stupid for That

Some networking vendors realized that one way to gain mindshare is to make their network operating systems available as free-to-download containers or virtual machines. That’s the right way to go; I love their efforts and point out who went down that path whenever possible1 (as well as others like Cisco who try to make our lives miserable).

However, those virtual machines better work out of the box, or you’ll get frustrated engineers who will give up and never touch your warez again, or as someone said in a LinkedIn comment to my blog post describing how Junos vPTX consistently rejects its DHCP-assigned IP address: “If I had encountered an issue like this before seeing Ivan’s post, I would have definitely concluded that I am doing it wrong.”2

Read more …

Weekend Reads 050424


Quantum sensing is poised to revolutionize virtually every aspect of our world. Quantum sensing’s distinctive ability to detect magnetic signatures is already aiding in navigation for countless fuel tankers worldwide, providing otherwise unachievable medical scans, and keeping all of our computer clocks in sync.


Surprisingly, most network attacks are not exceptionally sophisticated, technologically advanced, or reliant on zero-day tools that exploit edge-case vulnerabilities.


A growing number of data center operators and equipment vendors are anticipating the proliferation of direct liquid cooling systems (DLC) over the next few years. As far as projections go, Uptime Institute’s surveys agree: the industry consensus for the mainstream adoption of liquid-cooled IT converges on the latter half of the 2020s.


The recent discovery of a backdoor in XZ Utils (CVE-2024-3094), a data compression utility used by a wide array of various open-source, Linux-based computer applications, underscores the importance of open-source software security.


The IETF has had a long tradition of doing its technical work through a consensus process, taking into account the different views among IETF participants and coming to (at least rough) consensus on technical matters.


This is where Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) steps in as a powerful tool to bolster security. Let’s delve into Continue reading

Supermicro Finally Mints Some Coin Peddling Rackscale Iron

With new generations of GPUs and other kinds of AI accelerators either shipping or soon to start shipping and new CPUs also soon to be available from Intel and AMD, and sales already at a historical high level at Supermicro, you might not be expecting for sales to bust through a whole new higher ceiling starting in the next quarter. …

Supermicro Finally Mints Some Coin Peddling Rackscale Iron was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Cilium’s Past Points to Its Future 

Cilium is obviously undergoing a lot of changes as a dynamic and popular open source project that heavily utilizes eBPF, but its original reason remains in check:  a tool that offers security, observability and networking capabilities. Its capabilities — or hooks — extend from the kernel to throughout the network, including cloud, on-premises or other infrastructures. This definition covers a lot of things, while Cilium should continue to adapt and extend as infrastructure needs change. @tgraf__ ‘s « Cilium Vision » has a lot of future but the core design remains in place. @thenewstack March 19, 2024 In this article, we look at Thomas Graf, who is CTO of Isovalent, described during his KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe talk Continue reading

IPB150: IPv6 Basics: ICMPv6

As part of our ongoing series on IPv6 basics, today we cover the differences you should be aware of between ICMPv4 and ICMPv6. Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) is the protocol that lets you test reachability: Pings, echoes, TCP connections, etc. We explain what you need to know and why you need to know it,... Read more »

How To Make More Money Renting A GPU Than Nvidia Makes Selling It

It is not a coincidence that the companies that got the most “Hopper” H100 allocations from Nvidia in 2023 were also the hyperscalers and cloud builders, who in many cases wear both hats and who are as interested in renting out their GPU capacity for others to build AI models as they are in innovating in the development of large language models. …

How To Make More Money Renting A GPU Than Nvidia Makes Selling It was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Configuration of BGP afi/safi L2VPN EVPN and NVE Tunnel Interface

Overlay Network Routing: MP-BGP L2VPN/EVPN



EVPN Fabric Data Plane – MP-BGP


Instead of being a protocol, EVPN is a solution that utilizes the Multi-Protocol Border Gateway Protocol (MP-BGP) for its control plane in an overlay network. Besides, EVPN employs Virtual eXtensible Local Area Network (VXLAN) encapsulation for the data plane of the overlay network.

Multi-Protocol BGP (MP-BGP) is an extension of BGP-4 that allows BGP speakers to encode Network Layer Reachability Information (NLRI) of various address types, including IPv4/6, VPNv4, and MAC addresses, into BGP Update messages. The MP_REACH_NLRI path attribute (PA) carried within MP-BGP update messages includes Address Family Identifier (AFI) and Subsequent Address Family Identifier (SAFI) attributes. The combination of AFI and SAFI determines the semantics of the carried Network Layer Reachability Information (NLRI). For example, AFI-25 (L2VPN) with SAFI-70 (EVPN) defines an MP-BGP-based L2VPN solution, which extends a broadcast domain in a multipoint manner over a routed IPv4 infrastructure using an Ethernet VPN (EVPN) solution.

BGP EVPN Route Types (BGP RT) carried in BGP update messages describe the advertised EVPN NLRIs (Network Layer Reachability Information) type. Besides publishing IP Prefix information with IP Prefix Route (EVPN RT 5), BGP EVPN uses MAC Advertisement Route (EVPN RT 2) Continue reading

NAN062: The Team Behind Nautobot (Part 1)

Today we chat with the maintainers of Nautobot, the open source network source of truth and network automation platform. Jason Edelman, Ken Celenza, John Anderson explain how their day jobs at professional services company, Network to Code, informs their work on Nautobot. They walk us through Nautobot’s core, out-of-the-box capabilities as well as the extensibility... Read more »
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