Palo Alto Interview Questions and Answers – Part II

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Plao Alto Interview Questions and Answers

This post is a continuation to one of our recent post where we discussed a few questions and answers on Palo Alto firewall. Here we are adding another set of Q&A based on our readers interest. Hope this will help you in improving your knowledge of the PA firewall.


Note : for international purchases ($6) for the above document (containing ~50 Q&A) please reach out to us at be[email protected]

1. How to publish internal website to internet. Or how to perform destination NAT ?

To publish internal website to outside world, we would require destination NAT and policy configuration. NAT require converting internal private IP address in to external public IP address. Firewall policy need to enable access to internal server on http service from outside .We can see how to perform NAT and policy configuration with respect to following scenario Read more

Provide the access to 192.168.10.100 through the public IP address 64.10.11.10 from internet

Following NAT and policy rules need to be created.

NAT:-> Here we need to use pre-NAT configuration to identify zone. Both source and destination Zone should be Untrust-L3 as source and destination address part of un trust zone

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Policy-> Here we need to use Post-NAT configuration to identify zone. The source zone will be Untrust-L3 as the source address still same 12.67.5.2 and the destination zone would be Trust-L3 as the translated IP address belongs to trust-l3 zone.

We have to use pre-NAT IP address for the source and destination IP address part on policy configuration. According to packet flow, actual translation is not yet happen, only egress zone and route look up happened for the packet. Actual translation will happen after policy lookup . Please click here to understand detailed packet flow in PA firewall.  Just remember the following technique so it will be easy to understand

In firewall rule,

Zone: Post NAT

IP address: Pre NAT

In NAT rule,

Zone: Pre NAT

Final Configuration looks like below:

2. What is Global Protect ?

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GlobalProtect provides a transparent agent that extends enterprise security Policy to all users regardless of their location. The agent also can act as Remote Access VPN client.  Following are the component

Gateway : This can be or more interface on Palo Alto firewall which provide access and security enforcement for traffic from Global Protect Agent

Portal: Centralized control which manages gatrway, certificate , user authentication and end host check list

Agent : software on the laptop that is configured to connect to the GlobalProtect deployment.

3. Explain about virtual system ?

A virtual system specifies a collection of physical and logical firewall interfaces and security zones.Virtual system allows to segmentation of security policy functionalities like ACL, NAT and QOS. Networking functions including static and dynamic routing are not controlled by virtual systems. If routing segmentation is desired for each virtual system, we should have an additional virtual router.

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4.Explain about various links used to establish HA or HA introduction ?

PA firewall use HA links to synchronize data and maintain state information. Some models of the firewall have dedicated HA ports—Control link (HA1) and Data link (HA2), while others require you to use the in-band ports as HA links.

Control Link :  The HA1 links used to exchange hellos, heartbeats, and HA state information, and management plane sync for routing, User-ID information and synchronize configuration . The HA1 should be layar 3 interface which require an IP address

Data Link : The HA2 link is used to synchronize sessions, forwarding tables, IPSec security associations and ARP tables between firewalls in an HA pair. The HA 2 is a layer 2 link

Backup Links: Provide redundancy for the HA1 and the HA2 links. In-band ports are used as backup links for both HA1 and HA2. The HA backup links IP address must be on different subnet from primary HA links.

Packet-Forwarding Link: In addition to the HA1 and HA2 links, an active/active deployment also requires a dedicated HA3 link. The firewalls use this link for forwarding packets to the peer during session setup and asymmetric traffic flow.

4. What protocol used to exchange heart beat between HA ?

ICMP

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5. Various port numbers used in HA ?

HA1: tcp/28769,tcp/28260 for clear text communication ,tcp/28 for encrypted communication

HA2: Use protocol number 99 or UDP-29281

6. What are the scenarios for fail-over triggering ?

->if one or more monitored interfaces fail

->if one or more specified destinations cannot be pinged by the active firewall

->if the active device does not respond to heartbeat polls (Loss of three consecutive heartbeats over period of 1000 milliseconds)

7. How to troubleshoot HA using CLI ?

>show high-availability state : Show the HA state of the firewall

>show high-availability state-synchronization : to check sync status

>show high-availability path-monitoring : to show the status of path monitoring

>request high-availablity state suspend : to suspend active box and make the current passive box as active

8. which command to check the firewall policy matching for particular destination ?

>test security-policy-match from trust to untrust destination <IP>

9.Command to check the NAT rule ?

>test nat-policy-match

10. Command to check the system details ?

>show system info  // It will show management IP , System version and serial number

11. How to perform debug in PA ?

Following are the steps

Clear all packet capture settings

>debug dataplane packet-diag clear all

set traffic matching condition

> debug dataplane packet-diag set filter match source 192.168.9.40 destination 4.2.2.2
> debug dataplane packet-diag set filter on

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Enable packet capture

> debug dataplane packet-diag set capture stage receive file rx.pcap
> debug dataplane packet-diag set capture stage transmit file tx.pcap
> debug dataplane packet-diag set capture stage drop file dp.pcap
> debug dataplane packet-diag set capture stage firewall file fw.pcap
> debug dataplane packet-diag set capture on

View the captured file

view-pcap filter-pcap rx.pcap

12. What you mean by Device Group and Device Template.?

Device group allows you to group firewalls which is require similar  set of policy , such as firewalls that manage a group of branch offices or individual departments in a company. Panorama treats each group as a single unit when applying policies. A firewall can belong to only one device group. The Objects and Policies are only part of Device Group.

Device Template :

Device Templates enable you to deploy a common base configuration like Network and device specific settings to multiple firewalls that require similar settings.
This is available in Device and Network tabs on Panorama

13. Why you are using Security Profile .?

Security Profile using to scans allowed applications for threats, such as viruses, malware, spyware, and DDOS attacks.Security profiles are not used in the match criteria of a traffic flow. The security profile is applied to scan traffic after the application or category is allowed by the security policy. You can add security profiles that are commonly applied together to a Security Profile Group

Following are the Security Profiles available

  • Antivirus Profiles
  • Anti-Spyware Profiles
  • Vulnerability Protection Profiles
  • URL Filtering Profiles
  • Data Filtering Profiles
  • File Blocking Profiles
  • WildFire Analysis Profiles
  • DoS Protection Profiles

Enjoyed Reading.? If you found the above contents useful and easily understandable, you can download a bundle of most frequently asked interview question and answers via the below link. We are sure it will help you increase your confidence in Palo Alto and will help you in tackling the interviews with positive results.Please click below link (you will be re-directed to the payment gateway  – Instamojo) to Download PDF for less than 6 USD (INR 400). This contains 45 + Most frequently asked PA interview question on the following topics with detailed explanation.

  • Question from VPN setup and troubleshooting
  • Migration of ASA into PA
  • Questions from AppID and Vulnerability Protection
  • PA Best practices
  • Other Hot questions and explanation


Note : for international purchases ($6) for the above document (containing ~50 Q&A) please reach out to us at [email protected]

Hope this helped in improving your Palo Alto knowledge or clearing some of your doubts. Please let us know if you have any queries/comments.

Palo Alto Interview Questions and Answers – Part I

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Plao Alto Interview Questions and Answers

Some of our readers had requested for a post with some of the common questions and answers for the Palo Alto Firewall, after reading our post on PA Firewall. Following are some of the questions normally asked for PA interview. Please use the comment section if you have any questions to add .


Note : for international purchases ($6) for the above document (containing ~50 Q&A) please reach out to us at [email protected]

1. Why Palo Alto is being called as next generation firewall ?

Ans: Next-generation firewalls include enterprise firewall capabilities, an intrusion prevention system (IPS) and application control features. Palo Alto Networks delivers all the next generation firewall features using the single platform, parallel processing and single management systems, unlike other vendors who use different modules or multiple management systems to offer NGFW features. Palo Alto NGFW different from other venders in terms of Platform, Process and architecture Read more

2. Difference between Palo Alto NGFW and Checkpoint UTM  ?

PA follows Single pass parallel processing while UTM follows Multi pass architecture process

3. Describe about Palo Alto architecture and advantage ?

Architecture- Single Pass Parallel Processing (SP3) architecture

Advantage: This Single Pass traffic processing enables very high throughput and low latency – with all security functions active.  It also offers single, fully integrated policy which helps simple and easier management of firewall policy

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4. Explain about Single Pass and Parallel processing architecture ?

Single Pass : The single pass software performs operations once per packet. As a packet is processed, networking functions, policy lookup, application identification and decoding, and signature matching for any and all threats and content are all performed just once.  Instead of using separate engines and signature sets (requiring multi-pass scanning) and instead of using file proxies (requiring file download prior to scanning), the single pass software in next-generation firewalls scans content once and in a stream-based fashion to avoid latency introduction.

Parallel Processing :   PA designed with separate data and control planes to support parallel processing. The second important element of the Parallel Processing hardware is the use of discrete, specialized processing groups to perform several critical functions.

  • Networking: routing, flow lookup, stats counting, NAT, and similar functions are performed on network-specific hardware
  • User-ID, App-ID, and policy all occur on a multi-core security engine with hardware acceleration for encryption, decryption, and decompression.
  • Content-ID content analysis uses dedicated, specialized content scanning engine
  • On the controlplane, a dedicated management processor (with dedicated disk and RAM) drives the configuration management, logging, and reporting without touching data processing hardware.

5. Difference between PA-200,PA-500 and higher models ?

In PA-200 and PA-500, Signature process and network processing implemented on software while higher models have dedicate hardware processer

6. What are the four deployment mode and explain ?
  1. Tap Mode : Tap mode allows you to passively monitor traffic flow across network by way of tap or switch SPAN/mirror port
  2. Virtual wire : In a virtual wire deployment, the firewall is installed transparently on a network segment by binding two interfaces together

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  1. Layer 2 mode : multiple interfaces can be configured into a “virtual-switch” or VLAN in L2 mode.
  2. Layer 3 Deployment : In a Layer 3 deployment, the firewall routes traffic between multiple interfaces. An IP address must be assigned to each interface and a virtual router must be defined to route the traffic.

7. What you mean by Zone Protection profile ?

Zone Protection Profiles offer protection against most common flood, reconnaissance, and other packet-based attacks. For each security zone, you can define a zone protection profile that specifies how the security gateway responds to attacks from that zone. The following types of protection are supported:

-Flood Protection—Protects against SYN, ICMP, UDP, and other IP-based flooding attacks.

-Reconnaissance detection—Allows you to detect and block commonly used port scans and IP address sweeps that attackers run to find potential attack targets.

-Packet-based attack protection—Protects against large ICMP packets and ICMP fragment attacks.

Configured under Network tab -> Network Profiles -> Zone protection.

8. What is u-turn NAT and how to configure ?

U-turn NAT is applicable when internal resources on trust zone need to access DMZ resources using public IP addresses of Untrust zone.

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Let’s explain based on below scenario.

In above example, the website company.com (192.168.10.20) statically NAT’ed with public IP address 81.23.7.22 on untrusted zone. Users in the corporate office on the 192.168.1.0/24 segment need to access the company webpage. Their DNS lookup will resolve to the public IP in the Internet zone. The basic destination NAT rules that provide internet users access to the web server will not work for internal users browsing to the public IP .

Following are the NAT rule and policy definition.

  Next Page

Enjoyed Reading.? If you found the above contents useful and easily understandable, you can download a bundle of most frequently asked interview question and answers via the below link. We are sure it will help you increase your confidence in Palo Alto and will help you in tackling the interviews with positive results.Please click below link (you will be re-directed to the payment gateway  – Instamojo) to Download PDF for less than 6 USD (INR 400). This contains 45 + Most frequently asked PA interview question on the following topics with detailed explanation.

  • Question from VPN setup and troubleshooting
  • Migration of ASA into PA
  • Questions from AppID and Vulnerability Protection
  • PA Best practices
  • Other Hot questions and explanation


Note : for international purchases ($6) for the above document (containing ~50 Q&A) please reach out to us at [email protected]

Click Here for Part 2 of this post, another set of questions for you.

Network Automation using Python – Part VII – SSL certificate status validation and alert configuration

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Python SSL Certificate Checker 

Continuing our Networking Automation using Python blog series, here is the Part 7.

In this part we are explaining python script which will check the expiry date of a SSL certificate from a list of IP address and send an e-mail automatically if the certificate expiry date is nearing. The IP addresses can be of your load balancer VIP or Server IP address or any device IP address. You can use same script to check SSL certificate for any port number like 443,587,993,995,465 etc.

Basic Requirements Read more

  1. Python 3.6
  2. server_ip.txt , a text file which contains all device IP address
  3. A email account on www.outlook.com . You can use any other mail account by editing SMTP server detail on the script. Please let us know if you want customised script which will sent mail from your corporate mail account or Microsoft Outlook.

Please read part 1 and part 2 to get started with python and how to run your first program.

This script have two files

  1. server_ip.txt -> this file store all the device IP address
  2. sslcheck.py -> This is the python script

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How to run :

Step 1. Download the sslcheck and server_ip to the same folder

Step 2. Change the sslcheck.txt to sslcheck.py

Step 3. Open server_ip.txt and save with all your device IP address with port number whose SSL certificate need to be check.

Step 4. Open command prompt “CMD” and navigate to the folder where you have saved script and ‘server_ip.txt’

Step 5. Run script by typing “python sslcheck.py”  on command prompt

Step 6.It will ask for threshold date, from mail id , to mail id and credentials. Please provide the same

Step 7. Script will go though each device SSL certificate and sent mail if anything going to expire within given number of days.

 

Script Details

import ssl
from datetime import datetime
import pytz
import OpenSSL
import socket
import getpass
from datetime import timedelta
import smtplib
from email.mime.multipart import MIMEMultipart
from email.mime.text import MIMEText

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print(“Program to check SSL certificate validity \n”)
##opening file
ipfile=open(‘server_ip.txt’)
cur_date = datetime.utcnow()
mailbody=””
expcount=0

##getting details
expday=input(“Please provide threshold expiry date :”)
from_mail=input(“Your mail id : “)
passwd=getpass.getpass(“password : “)
to_mail=input(“Target mail id : “)
##checking certificate validity. for loop to go through each IP in server_ip.txt file

for ip in ipfile:
try:
host = ip.strip().split(“:”)[0]
port = ip.strip().split(“:”)[1]
print(“\nChecking certifcate for server “,host)
ctx = OpenSSL.SSL.Context(ssl.PROTOCOL_TLSv1)
s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
s.connect((host, int(port)))
cnx = OpenSSL.SSL.Connection(ctx, s)
cnx.set_connect_state()
cnx.do_handshake()
cert=cnx.get_peer_certificate()
s.close()
server_name = cert.get_subject().commonName
print (server_name)

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##checking expiry date
edate=cert.get_notAfter()
edate=edate.decode()

##converting in to system time format
exp_date = datetime.strptime(edate,’%Y%m%d%H%M%SZ’)
days_to_expire = int((exp_date – cur_date).days)
print(“day to expire”,days_to_expire)
##preparing mail body
if days_to_expire < int(expday) :
expcount=expcount+1
mailbody=mailbody+”\n Server name =”+server_name+”, Days to expire:”+str(days_to_expire)

except:
print (“error on connection to Server,”,host)
print (mailbody)

#sending mail if any certificate going to expire within threshold days
if expcount >= 1 :
try:
print(“\nCertifcate alert for “+str(expcount)+” Servers,Sending mails”)

body=”Following certificate going to expire, please take action \n”+mailbody
s = smtplib.SMTP(host=’smtp-mail.outlook.com’, port=587) # change here if you want to use other smtp server
s.starttls()
s.login(from_mail,passwd)

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msg = MIMEMultipart() # create a message
msg[‘From’]=from_mail
msg[‘To’]=to_mail
msg[‘Subject’]=”Certificate Expire alert”
# add in the message body
msg.attach(MIMEText(str(body),’plain’))

# send the message via the server set up earlier.
s.send_message(msg)
print(“Mail sent”)
s.close()
except:
print (“Sending mail failed”)
else :
print(“All certificate are below the threshold date”)

print (‘\nCert check completed’)

 

Sample Output 

Below images are sample script and a sample e-mail alert.

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Sample e-mail alert

Hope this post helped you. You can read more posts on Network automation using Python here. Please use the comments section for any queries/suggestions .

Reference :

https://www.python.org/

http://www.tutorialspoint.com/python/ 

Understanding the VMAX FA/RDF port numbering

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The logical numbering of the VMAX ports (FE, RF etc.. ports on the VMAX-3 and VMAX AFA’s) are quite confusing. It is important as we do the zoning and the host integration for these arrays. And yes it really is confusing, for any storage administrator who is not very familiar with.

This post is an attempt to explain the mapping of physical to logical numbering of the FA/RDF ports on a VMAX system.

Read more

The physical numbering of the SLICs (IO Modules) are as in the above snip and is quite straightforward. The modules are starting from the Slot 0 to Slot 10 with the Management modules (MMCS on the first engine/ MM on the remaining engines) on the left most. Few slots will be used for Vault to Flash modules which will have no ports on them. The slot# and the type of module in it may vary slightly with the addition of compression modules in AFA arrays. The SLICs 2,3,8 and 9 are important from an admin point of view as these will have either FA/RDF modules in. Even though the Back-end modules will have physical ports and will have connectivity, it is not of much concern for an admin as it will be configured during the array initialization.

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Here comes the logical numbering. For numbering a port, we should be aware of the director we are referring to and the slot number for the specific module. Considering the above snip as a single engine scenario, the odd director will be director 1 and even director will be director 2. This will be similar for the remaining engines (e.g., For engine-4, the odd director will be director 7 and even will be director 8 ).

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Now, let us assume the SLIC 2 is configured with FA emulation. The ports on director 1 SLIC will be numbered starting with 1d (d for FA emulation). The port numbers will be 1d4,1d5,1d6 and 1d7. You will have to keep this image in mind or will have to make a note of it to have the logical numbering for each SLIC. For RDF emulation, the numbering will have an e in it (e for RDF). Let us assume, the SLIC 8 is of RDF emulation. The 3rd port (the last port with numbering starting from 0 as in first pic) on SLIC 8 on even director will be 2e27. 2 for 2nd director, e for RDF emulation and 27 is the logical number.

Hopefully that was not that tough and it helped you. You may try various combinations for your practice. To start with, what will be the logical number for an FA port odd director SLIC 8 and port 2 ?

You may find more EMC VMAX posts here. Please use the comments section for any queries/suggestions.

Network Automation using Python – Part VI – Automatic backup of multiple switches

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Python Backup Script

 

Continuing our Networking Automation using Python blog series, here is the Part 6.

Here we are explaining a simple script to take the backup of multiple Cisco switches/routers quickly. You can schedule the script using crone or job scheduler so it will automatically take daily backup without your intervention. The script will take the output of ‘sh run’ and save to the file. The file name would be  device IP address + today’s date .

Please read part 1 and part 2 to get started with python and to run your first program. Please read part 4 for detailed steps on how to take an SSH session of a switch.

Read more

The script have two files

  1. ipfile.txt -> this file store all the device IP address
  2. autobackup.py -> This is the python script

How to run :

Step 1. Download the autobackup and iplist to the same folder

Step 2. Change the autobackup.txt to autobackup-cisco.py

Step 3. Open iplist.txt and save with all your device IP address which need to be backed up.

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Step 4. Open command prompt “CMD” and navigate to the folder where you have saved script and ‘iplist.txt’

Step 5. Run script by typing “python autobackup-cisco.py”  on command prompt

Step 6. You can see the backup of device on same folder with the filename device IP address+ date

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Sample screenshot below.

Hope this post helped you.

You can read more posts on Network automation using Python here. Please use the comments section for any queries/suggestions .

Reference :

https://www.tutorialspoint.com/python

https://www.python.org/

Network Automation using Python – Part V – running a set of commands on Cisco switches

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Python Script to run set of commands

Continuing our Networking Automation using Python blog series, here is the Part 5.

This post details about an all-in-one script which will helps you to execute series of commands in multiple switches. This script can be utilized by peoples who does not have much idea in scripting. We have made this task in three file to simplify the operation so that you don’t have to change the script every time .

Please read part 1 and part 2 for details about installing python and running your first program. Please read part 4 if you want to know how to take SSH of a switch.

Read more

File details :
  1. Configuration file-> This file include all the configuration commands need to be executed on remote switches. The name of the file is ‘configfile.txt’
  2. IP File -> This file contains IP address of all the devices, file named ‘ipfile.txt’
  3. Script file -> This files contains python script to execute commands specified on configuration file on all devices. (filename here is ‘configcommand.py’)

For example , if i need to update ACL 101 which is  applied to outside interface of all routers, follow the below steps.

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Step 1. Open your ‘configfile.txt’ and add following commands

config terminal
access-list 101 permit ip 10.1.1.0 0.0.0.255 172.16.1.0 0.0.0.255
end
write

Step 2. Open ‘iplist.txt’ and add all your router IP address

Step 3. Open command prompt and give following command to execute

cmd->python configcommand.py

 

Working : 

The script will login to the first device whose IP address mentioned in ‘ipfile.txt’ and execute all the commands given in ‘configfile.txt’ file. Once it is done, the script will login to the next IP address and execute all the commands. The process will continue until the last IP address on the ‘ipfile.txt’ fetch and execute.

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You can use the same script to execute any kind of command like SNMP modification, interface configuration etc. All you just want to edit ‘configfile.txt’ and no need to edit the script file.

 

Complete Script – Download

Click below links to  download script (to SSH to a device and run multiple commands) and other file  Please change the file extension from .txt to .py for executing directly.

Script- configcommand

Configfile –configfile

iplist.txt –iplist

Also, keeping a copy here in this post below.

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from netmiko import ConnectHandler
import getpass,sys,time

device = {
‘device_type’: ‘cisco_ios’,
‘ip’: ‘192.168.43.10’,
‘username’: ‘username’,
‘password’: ‘password’,
‘secret’:’password’
}
ipfile=open(“iplist.txt”)
print (“Script for SSH to device, Please enter your credential”)
device[‘username’]=input(“User name “)
device[‘password’]=getpass.getpass()
device[‘secret’]=input(“Enter enable password: “)
configfile=open(“configfile.txt”)
configset=configfile.read()
configfile.close()

for line in ipfile:

device[‘ip’]=line.strip(“\n”)
print(“\n\nConnecting Device “,line)
net_connect = ConnectHandler(**device)
net_connect.enable()
time.sleep(2)
print (“Passing configuration set “)
net_connect.send_config_set(configset)
print (“Device Conigured “)

ipfile.close()

Hope you enjoyed reading. You can read more posts on Network automation using Python here. Please use the comments section for any queries/suggestions .

Reference :

https://www.python.org/

https://www.tutorialspoint.com/python

Network Automation using Python – Part IV – SSH to Cisco Device

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SSH Cisco Device

Continuing our Networking Automation using Python blog series, here is the Part 4.

We had explained the ways to take a Telnet session to the Switches in our previous posts. Now here we are explaining the steps to SSH to Cisco switch using Python script and to configure IP on vlan interface. IP configuration is an example here, once you have SSH’ed to the switch, you can perform any other configuration as per your requirement, by just modifying the script a bit. Please read part 1 and part 2 to get an idea about how to install python and run your first program.

We are using netmiko module for taking SSH session of device.

What is Netmiko ?

Read more

Netmiko is open-source Python library that simplifies SSH management to network devices. This is a common and easy to use library as netmiko supporting multi vendor devices.You can read more about netmiko from here . Following are the some of the vendor devices supported by Netmiko .

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Arista vEOS
Cisco ASA
Cisco IOS
Cisco IOS-XR
Cisco NX-OS
Cisco SG300
HP Comware7

Cisco IOS-XE
HP ProCurve
Juniper Junos
Linux

How to install Netmiko

Netmiko package not available by default. You should have netmiko library installed on your machine .Following are the steps to download and install netmiko in Python 3.6

Step 1. Working internet connection and Python 3.6 installed on machine

Step 2. On command prompt, type following command, this will automatically fetch netmiko from internet and install on your machine

“python -m pip install netmiko”

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Following are the steps to start with netmiko on your script

Import netmiko to your Script

Use the following command to import netmiko package to your script

from netmiko import ConnectHandler

Create Device template 

We have to create device template using python dictionary data type.

device= {
‘device_type’: ‘cisco_ios’,
‘ip’: ‘10.10.10.10’,
‘username’: ‘admin’,
‘password’: ‘Beginnersforum’,
‘port’ : 22,
‘secret’: ‘enablepassword’# optional, replace with your enable password ”
}

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where,

device->This is name of template, you can give any name like cisco_2960,juniper_sw etc

‘device_type’ -> Here we are specifying the type of device we are taking ssh,

secret -> Here we are giving the enable password

Port and secret are optional here and the default value for port is 22.

Establish an SSH connection to the device

We are establishing SSH connection to device by passing the above defined template

ssh_connect = ConnectHandler (**cisco_switch)

Run Show command 

Here the ‘show ip int brief” command will execute on remote device and output will store to ‘result” variable. We can print “result” to see the output on window

result = ssh_connect.send_command(‘show ip int brief‘) print(result)

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Sample output :

Interface IP-Address OK? Method Status Protocol
FastEthernet0 unassigned YES unset down down
FastEthernet1 unassigned YES unset down down
FastEthernet2 10.10.10.10 YES manual up up
Vlan1 unassigned YES unset down down

Complete Script – Download

You can download script (to SSH to a device and add IP address to vlan 10) from here. Please change the file extension from .txt to .py for executing directly.

Also, keeping a copy here in this post below.

from netmiko import ConnectHandler
import getpass
import sys

#create device template

device = {
‘device_type’: ‘cisco_ios’,
‘ip’: ‘192.168.43.10’,
‘username’: ‘username’,
‘password’: ‘password’,
‘secret’:’password’
}

#Getting the user credential

print (“Script for SSH to device, Please enter your credential”)
device[‘username’]=input(“User name “)
device[‘password’]=getpass.getpass()
device[‘secret’]=input(“Enter enable password”)

#Establishing SSH connection
ssh_connect = ConnectHandler(**device)

#changing to enable mode
ssh_connect.enable()
ssh_connect.send_command(‘config t’)
ssh_connect.send_command(‘int vlan 10’)
ssh_connect.send_command(‘ip add 10.10.10.1 255.255.255.0)
ssh_connect.send_command(‘end’)
ssh_connect.send_command(‘write’)
ssh_connect.disconnect()

Hope you enjoyed reading. You can read more posts on Network automation using Python here. Please use the comments section for any queries/suggestions .

Reference :

https://www.tutorialspoint.com/python

https://www.python.org/

Network Automation using Python – Part II – Telnet to a Switch and IP configuration

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This is the 2nd post from my Networking Automation using Python blog series.

As part of network automation, the first thing is accessing (Telnet -ing) a switch. Here is a simple program explaining step by step way to access Cisco switch using telnet and to configure IP address on Vlan interface – all using Python.

Please check out our first post Network Automation using Python – Part I for getting started with Python. We have explained the basics of Python and the installation procedure in the previous post.

“telnetlib” module

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“telnetlib” is the name of module which is supporting to take the telnet of device. This will be automatically installed as part of your python installation

->Import telnet library

The first step is to import telnet library to our script , use the following command

“import telnetlib”

->Connecting a Host

To connect a device using telnetlib, use following command.

tn=telnetlib.Telnet(HOST)

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Where HOST is the variable which is having the IP address of device and “tn” is the           variable name which is creating virtual telnet link with your device. It could be any name as you wish ( like telnet or tnet) .You should use same name for the rest of the             operation on the device.

-> Writing  command to to Host

tn.write(“config t”)

The write() function using to deliver command to device. The above example will write       “config t”  command on the device telnet prompt.

-> Reading output from host

output=tn.read_all()

read_all() function will read the output of command from device and store in to the variable output

That concludes the basics for initiating a telnet session to the switch.

Following are the step by step guidelines to access the switch and then configure the IP on the switch. The steps explained below is based on 2.6 version for easy understanding. I have attached version 3.6 and 2.6 script also as there are changes in the script. The main difference in 3.6 as we need to convert all values in to ASCII before sending to device.

Step 1. Importing the required modules

import telnetlib

import getpass

import time

“getpass” is the module to read the password without printing on screen

“time” will be using to control the flow of program by pausing script certain duration

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Step 2. Initialise the Host Variable

The “Host” variable holding the IP address of Device . We can assign the IP address as follows. Please understa

HOST=”192.168.43.10″

Step 3. Read the user name and password

user = raw_input(“Enter your telnet username: “)
password = getpass.getpass()

raw_input() is an in built function used to read data giving by user and assigning to a variable. Here it will display “Enter your telnet username” on the screen and read the username provided by user and assign to variable called user. After executing those lines, we will have username on “user” variable and password on “password” variable.

Step 4. Connect to device and supply username and password

tn = telnetlib.Telnet(HOST)

tn.read_until(“Username: “)

tn.write(user + “\n”)

if password:

tn.read_until(“Password: “)

tn.write(password + “\n”)

tn = telnetlib.Telnet(Host)    // This command will initiate a telnet session to the given IP address on background .

tn.read_until(b”Username: “)    // This will be used to read output from device until it is asking for ‘Username’

tn.write(user + “\n”)   // This will supply the username to the telnet console followed by enter key. “\n” using to provide enter key.

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Step 5. Configure the device

In this step, we will be delivering configuration command to device one by one

tn.write(“enable\n”)    // changing to enable mode
tn.write(“cisco\n”)      // providing enable password
tn.write(“conf t\n”)     //moving to configuration mode
tn.write(“int vlan 10 \n”)   // changing to vlan 10 interface
tn.write(“ip address 1.1.1.1 255.255.255.255\n”)  // Assigning the IP address
tn.write(“end\n”)    //ending the configuration
tn.write(“exit\n”)

We have delivered all commands using write() function. You can use same write function to deliver the command as per your requirement. Save and Execute the script using RUN . Please refer part 1 if you don’d know how to write and execute script.

Script download

You can download the script for version 2.6, here

You can download the script for version 3.6, here

 

So, that’s it. Hope this helped you. You can read more posts on Network automation using Python here. Please use the comments section for your queries/comments.

Reference :

http://www.python.org/

www.tutorialspoint.com/python

Network Automation using Python – Part I – Python basics

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Network Automation using Python

We are starting with series of posts which will help you to automate your networking tasks using Python. This is a step by step guide which will show how to install Python and start your first program. You do not require any programming skill to start with automation. Please keep watching  on upcoming posts to understand better.

What is Python

Python is a general-purpose interpreted, interactive, object-oriented, and high-level programming language. It was created by Guido van Rossum during 1985- 1990. Like Perl, Python source code is also available under the GNU General Public License (GPL). This tutorial gives understanding how to install python one Windows machine and make it ready for Network Automation programming. Here in this post I will be covering only essential parts to start with Python so that we can continue with the network automation things in the coming posts. Please follow https://www.tutorialspoint.com/python/index.htm for more on basic/advanced python training.

Read more

Download Python

Download python from following link. You can either download 2.7 version or latest 3.6 version.Here we are showing 3.6 version since this is the latest and our all automation scripts are based on 3.6 version.

https://www.python.org/downloads/

Install Python.

Double click on the downloaded exe file and proceed with next until it gets installed.Leave all values default.

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Accessing Python.

Once it is installed, it will be available in  program list.

Click on Start-All Programs-Python 3.6  and click on IDLE .IDLE is the name of IDE for Python scripting .

Writing your first Program:

Once you have clicked IDLE, you will be available with following window.

To start with new program , click file -> New file. This will open new window where you can start coding.Here we will write a program to print Hello World . You can directly start coding from first line on wards as  python does not require any ‘main’ or ‘initialization’ statements for simple programs.

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Save the program

Click file and Save to save the program . The program will be saving with .py extension

Run the program.

Python does not require any compilation before running program as python is an interpreter program. To run the program , Select Run and click on Run Module

The result of the program will available on the first window. (Shell window)

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Accessing program from command line.

You can use following method to run the script which is created earlier or given by someone else. To run the program from command line, open CMD and navigate to the folder where your script has been saved .Type python and after that script file name on CMD. This will run the script and provide the out put on command prompt.

Hope you got the idea how to install Python and run your first program. Please click here for more posts from this series. Please use the comments section in case if you have any queries.

Reference:

https://www.tutorialspoint.com/python

https://www.python.org/

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