Splunk® Enterprise

Add Palo Alto Networks data: Single instance

Splunk Enterprise version 7.3 is no longer supported as of October 22, 2021. See the Splunk Software Support Policy for details. For information about upgrading to a supported version, see How to upgrade Splunk Enterprise.
This documentation does not apply to the most recent version of Splunk® Enterprise. For documentation on the most recent version, go to the latest release.

Install a syslog server

To get data into your single-instance Splunk Enterprise deployment, you first need to configure a Linux-based syslog server to send your Palo Alto Networks (PAN) syslog messages.

Sizing Estimates

Palo Alto Networks log sizes vary significantly. Each message is typically around 850 bytes. Users typically see one message per connection, whether allowed or denied. A branch office can generate hundreds of MB per day, while a datacenter cluster can generate approximately 250 GB per day.

The show session info command within Palo Alto Networks displays how many connections took place since bootup. One way of estimating event volume is to check this number at the same time on subsequent days. Then, calculate the number of connections you typically see per day. When multiplied by the general 850 byte number, you get an approximate expectation for data size.

Alternatively, you can implement the rsyslog config command. Then, track the size of the files created on disk to determine volume.

See the Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS 8.0 CLI Configuration guide to learn more.

Install a syslog-ng server

Complete the following steps to install a syslog-ng server:

  1. (Optional) Uninstall rsyslog if it shipped with your deployment:
    sudo rpm -e --nodeps rsyslog
  2. Install syslog-ng using yum: sudo yum-get install syslog-ng
  3. Configure yum to search the EPEL repo:
    sudo yum --enablerepo=epel install syslog-ng
  4. (Optional) Install the syslog-ng-libdbi module to prevent a warning message from appearing each time syslog-ng starts:
    sudo yum install --enablerepo=epel syslog-ng-libdbi
  5. Once you complete the installation, start syslog-ng: 
    sudo systemctl start syslog-ng.service
sudo systemctl enable syslog-ng.service
  6. Verify that syslog-ng is running by checking for a pid:
    pidof syslog-ng
Last modified on 07 December, 2018
Introduction   Configure a syslog-ng server to send Palo Alto Networks data to your Splunk Enterprise deployment

This documentation applies to the following versions of Splunk® Enterprise: 7.2.0, 7.2.1, 7.2.2, 7.2.3, 7.2.4, 7.2.5, 7.2.6, 7.2.7, 7.2.8, 7.2.9, 7.2.10, 7.3.0, 7.3.1, 7.3.2, 7.3.3, 7.3.4, 7.3.5, 7.3.6, 7.3.7, 7.3.8, 7.3.9, 8.0.0, 8.0.1, 8.0.2, 8.0.3, 8.0.4, 8.0.5, 8.0.6, 8.0.7, 8.0.8, 8.0.9, 8.0.10

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