Mastering Palo Alto Networks: Build, configure, and deploy network solutions for your infrastructure using features of PAN-OS

Tom Piens’ Mastering Palo Alto Networks is a phenomenal guide to Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS based NGFWs whether you are just starting out and need to learn the fundamentals of bringing up your first NGFW or you are a seasoned security professional who wants to improve your care and feeding of your security deployment and are looking to optimize your policies or your troubleshooting of the deployment.His coverage of key GUI based (and CLI based) configuration will become your go-to reference on most things PAN-OS based. That includes, in Chapter 7, the efficiencies of using Panorama through leveraging templates and device groups and their hierarchy.Piens’ coverage of tools and troubleshooting show the debugging power inherent in the existing tools (logs, reports, session flow analysis). Readers should also look into Palo Alto Networks Iron Skillet templates and other tools available on Github.Chapter 14 is a challenge to cover all the myriad of deployment options in a cloud environment (public, private, hybrid), but Tom does a thorough job of addressing cloud based NGFW. I can see an entire book just covering these types of virtual deployments, including container based NGFWs whether they be DaemonSet based or CN as a Kubernetes service.My hope is that future updates or new references will cover PAN-OS new features like AIOps, Advanced Routing Engine and 5G Mobility.

The book has been a collection of knowledge to me; instead of searching for all this knowledge all over the internet this book has saved me lots of time

My biggest takeaway from this book is the fact that along with showing how to configure and traverse the Palo Alto firewall, I was shown what the best practices are and guidance in troubleshooting techniques. This book is an one stop shop on everything Palo Alto firewall related and by the end you will have mastered it. I work with PANW NGFW's on a daily basis and this is going to be a great resource for me to have.

Good book, but same time I feel like you can get all this online.

This book is a reference book not one that you should use as a study guide for either the PCNSA or the PCNSE. I would suggest you use another material along with this book , otherwise you will fail the exam.

This is a good concise reference guide to cover a lot of NGFW concepts and use them in a simple language and easy to read, although some figures are not clear.

When reading Mastering Palo Alto Networks - Second Edition, every day is a learning day for me!While I have been working with Palo Alto Networks technologies for close to 10 years, the sheer depth offeatures and configuration combinations can become hard to comprehend. Tom Piens (aka Reaper) has always been a person that we, the consulting community, rely on when designing, troubleshooting or validating complex designs.For me, the most significant appeal of the book is that Reaper has captured and consolidated all the critical design aspects, best practices, potential pitfalls and troubleshooting guidances in a single resource.The book's layout is also excellent and is in line with how consultants like myself have designed and deployed Palo Alto Networks solutions for quite a long time. Technical publications often emphasise the "design and deploy" aspect but, unfortunately, not so much on the "run and operate" element. I am pleased that Reaper has taken the time and effort to capture operational aspects and provided excellent guidance around deeper troubleshooting.In the preface, it is mentioned that "This book is for novice to expert level firewall and network engineers." - I agree with this. As mentioned, I have been working with Palo Alto Networks firewalls for close to 10 years, and for me, this book (both editions) has been an excellent resource for "quick" validations. On the other end, I have a few colleagues who were new to Palo Alto Networks firewall asking for advice on the best way to learn the technology. Apart from the admin guides, I referred them to this book, and it was encouraging to see a few of them clear their PCNSE exams using the book as a study guide and building their test labs.A message to Reaper - some of the screenshots need to be reworked ;-)Seetal R Patel - Palo Alto Networks - Consulting Engineer

This book does a great job of covering the wide breadth of possibilities offered by the Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS next-generation firewalls. WhIlst the official documentation offers good literature when you know where to start and which features you wish to use, this book explains WHY you may want to use specific features, and then goes on to offer good approaches to each of the features along the way. It is also very useful for those who don't know where to start, and the chapters are ordered such that the early part of the book serves as an excellent introduction for those who are totally new and for whom the documentation would not serve well.Nothing is perfect of course, and in the next edition I would like to see more detail on PAN-OS APIs and programmability, specifically the XML and REST APIs and a compare/contrast between the two. I also think variables within Templates and Template Stacks would be worthy of more coverage.The author has done a very comprehensive job in almost every area though, there are very few places where features are not thoroughly explained. I think this book would be a very good companion for the majority of PAN-OS administrators