Hands-On Lab Session -“Building a Live Palo Alto Firewall Lab”

🧪 Session Summary

This meetup session is a live, hands-on lab, where we’ll walk through building a functioning Palo Alto Firewall using a realistic enterprise-style topology.

Whether you're following along with the Firewall Notes series or new to Palo Alto firewalls, this session will help you understand the core building blocks of a secure network deployment.

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📘 What We’ll Cover

During this guided lab, we will configure:

🔹 1. Interface & Zone Setup

Trust / Untrust zones

Assigning L3 interfaces

Basic device management best practices

🔹 2. Security Policies

Outbound access policy

Basic deny rules

Logging & rule verification

🔹 3. NAT (Source NAT / DIPP)

How private IPs are translated

NAT rule ordering

Troubleshooting NAT issues

🔹 4. Traffic Verification

Using ping, browser tests, and DNS

Traffic logs in Monitor ➝ Traffic

Common mistakes to avoid

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🔧 Lab Requirements

You can follow along using:

Option 1: VMware Workstation + PA-VM
Option 2: PNETLab + Palo Alto image
Option 3: Any home-lab hypervisor setup

Don’t worry—Femi will walk through the entire setup step-by-step.

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🎯 Who This Session Is For

✔ Beginners wanting to learn Palo Alto firewalls
✔ Intermediate engineers wanting hands-on practice
✔ Anyone preparing for PCNSE
✔ Security professionals building home labs
✔ Anyone following the Firewall Notes series

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💬 Interactive Discussion

During the session we’ll discuss:

NAT challenges in real environments

Best practices for rule ordering

How enterprises structure their Trust/Untrust boundaries

How this base firewall setup connects to HA, VPN, and Prisma Access

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