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36 • Panorama 7.0 Administrator’s Guide
© Palo Alto Networks, Inc.
Determine Panorama Log Storage Requirements
Set Up Panorama
Determine Panorama Log Storage Requirements
When you Plan Your Deployment, estimate how much log storage capacity Panorama requires to determine
which Panorama Platforms to deploy, whether to expand the storage on those platforms beyond their
default capacities, whether to deploy Dedicated Log Collectors, and whether to Configure Log Forwarding
from Panorama to External Destinations. When Panorama reaches the maximum capacity, it automatically
deletes older logs to create space for new ones. Therefore, to ensure that log retention meets your needs,
you should configure any additional storage during the Panorama setup stage. To expand log storage
capacity during or after setup, see Expand Log Storage Capacity on the Panorama Virtual Appliance or
Increase Storage on the M‐Series Appliance.
Perform the following steps to determine the approximate log storage that Panorama requires. For details
and use cases, refer to Panorama Sizing and Design Guide.
Determine Panorama Log Storage Requirements
Step 1 Determine the log retention
requirements of your organization.
Factors that affect log retention requirements include:
• IT policy of your organization
• Log redundancy—If you enable log redundancy when you
Configure a Collector Group, each log will have two copies,
which doubles your required log storage capacity.
• Regulatory requirements, such as those specified by the
Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS),
Sarbanes‐Oxley Act, and Health Insurance Portability and
Accountability Act (HIPAA)
If your organization requires the removal of logs after a
certain period, you can set the expiration period for each
log type. You can also set a storage quota for each log type
as a percentage of the total space if you need to prioritize
log retention by type. For details, see Manage Storage
Quotas and Expiration Periods for Logs and Reports.
Step 2 Determine the average daily logging
rates.
Do this multiple times each day at peak
and non‐peak times to estimate the
average. The more often you sample the
rates, the more accurate your estimate.
1. Display the current log generation rate in logs per second:
• If Panorama is not yet collecting logs, access the CLI of each
firewall, run the following command, and calculate the total
rates for all the firewalls. This command displays the
number of logs received in the last second.
>
debug log-receiver statistics
• If Panorama is already collecting logs, run the following
command at the CLI of each platform that receives logs
(Panorama management server or Dedicated Log Collector)
and calculate the total rates. This command gives the
average logging rate for the last five minutes.
>
debug log‐collector log‐collection‐stats show
incoming‐logs
You can also use an SNMP manager to determine
the logging rates of M‐Series appliances by
monitoring the panLcLogRate object (OID
1.3.6.1.4.1.25461.2.3.30.1.1).
2. Calculate the average of the sampled rates.
3. Calculate the daily logging rate by multiplying the average
logs‐per‐second by 86,400.