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Panorama Administrator's Guide

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1/panorama-admin.html)
Determine Panorama Log Storage Requirements

Table of Contents

When you Plan Your Panorama Deployment (/content/techdocs/en_US/panorama/10-1/panorama-admin/panorama-

overview/plan-your-panorama-deployment.html#ida533730b-cabe-440b-b8b3-27f4ab63a938), estimate how much log
storage capacity Panorama requires to determine which Panorama Models (/content/techdocs/en_US/panorama/10-
1/panorama-admin/panorama-overview/panorama-models.html#id6a2d6388-f727-45aa-ae7e-ef7599379871) to deploy,
whether to expand the storage on those appliances beyond their default capacities, whether to deploy Dedicated Log
Collectors (https://docs.paloaltonetworks.com/panorama/10-1/panorama-admin/panorama-overview/centralized-logging-
and-reporting), and whether to Configure Log Forwarding from Panorama to External Destinations
(/content/techdocs/en_US/panorama/10-1/panorama-admin/manage-log-collection/configure-log-forwarding-from-
panorama-to-external-destinations.html#id9f32b991-3e88-4976-a410-10d1367bcf8b). When log storage reaches the
maximum capacity, Panorama automatically deletes older logs to create space for new ones.

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 (https://knowledgebase.paloaltonetworks.com/KCSArticleDetail?
id=kA14u000000HBw7CAG&lang=en_US%E2%80%A9).

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
(/content/techdocs/en_US/panorama/10-1/panorama-admin/manage-log-collection/manage-collector-
groups/configure-a-collector-group.html#ide673d91e-8a6f-439a-a269-6536c092b28e), 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
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 If your organization requires the removal of logs after a certain period, you can set the expira-
tion 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 (/content/techdocs/en_US/panorama/10-

1/panorama-admin/administer-panorama/manage-storage-quotas-and-expiration-periods-for-
logs-and-reports.html#idb6e6e01f-d58c-425b-8290-c1fa6912f259).

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.

A 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 appliance 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 Log Collectors (see


the panLogCollector MIB, OID 1.3.6.1.4.1.25461.1.1.6) and firewalls (see the panDeviceLog-
ging, OID 1.3.6.1.4.1.25461.2.1.2.7).

B Calculate the average of the sampled rates.

C Calculate the daily logging rate by multiplying the average logs-per-second by 86,400.

STEP 3 -
Estimate the required storage capacity.

This formula provides only an estimate; the exact amount of required storage will differ from

 the formula result.

Use the formula:

[(<logs_per_second> x 86400) x <days_of retention>] x <average_log_size> ÷ (1024 x 1024 x 1024)

The average log size varies considerably by log type. However, you can use 489 bytes as an approximate
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 For example, if Panorama must store logs for 30 days with a log rate of 1,500 LPS, then the required log storage
capacity is: [(1500 x 86400) x 30] x 489 ÷ (1024 x 1024 x 1024) = 1770GB.

The results above are calculations for the detailed logs only with the default quota settings reserve 60% of the
available storage for detail logs. This means that the calculated number represents 60% of the storage used by
the Log Collector. To calculate the total storage required, divide this number by .60: 1770 ÷ .6 = 2951GB.

One third, roughly 33%, of the avilable disk space is allocated to logd formatted logs to support upgrades,
downgrades, and to support fixing database corruption. To calculate the total storage, divide the storage
required by .66: 2951 ÷ .66 = 4471 total storage.

STEP 4 -
Next steps...

If you determine that Panorama requires more log storage capacity:

Expand Log Storage Capacity on the Panorama Virtual Appliance (/content/techdocs/en_US/panorama/10-

1/panorama-admin/set-up-panorama/set-up-the-panorama-virtual-appliance/expand-log-storage-capacity-
on-the-panorama-virtual-appliance.html#iddcfb77c8-4a58-4ed7-b564-1a2505b1b1a1).

Increase Storage on the M-Series Appliance (/content/techdocs/en_US/panorama/10-1/panorama-

admin/set-up-panorama/set-up-the-m-series-appliance/increase-storage-on-the-m-series-
appliance.html#id314cc7e4-03df-4d4e-8de2-ac884a3a4d9a).

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