Configuration Deployment
About Configuration Deployment
Requirements and Prerequisites for Policy Management
Best Practices for Deploying Configuration Changes
Deploy the Configuration
- Deploy Configuration Changes
- Redeploy Existing Configurations to a Device
Manage Deployments
History for Configuration Deployment

Configuration Deployment

This chapter describes how to download configuration changes to one or more managed devices.

About Configuration Deployment

All device configuration is managed by the management center and then deployed to the managed devices.

Configuration Changes that Require Deployment

The system marks out-of-date policies with red status text that indicates how many of its targeted devices need a policy update. To clear this status, you must re-deploy the policy to the devices.

Deployment Required

Configuration changes that require a deployment include:

Modifying an access control policy: any changes to access control rules, the default action, policy targets, Security Intelligence filtering, advanced options including preprocessing, and so on.
Modifying any of the policies that the access control policy invokes: the SSL policy, network analysis policies, intrusion policies, file policies, identity policies, or DNS policies.
Changing any reusable object or configuration used in an access control policy or policies it invokes:
- network, port, VLAN tag, URL, and geolocation objects
- Security Intelligence lists and feeds
- application filters or detectors
- intrusion policy variable sets
- file lists
- decryption-related objects and security zones
Updating the system software, intrusion rules, or the vulnerability database (VDB).

Keep in mind that you can change some of these configurations from multiple places in the web interface. For example, you can modify security zones using the object manager (Objects > Object Management), but modifying an interface type in a device’s configuration (Devices > Device Management) can also change a zone and require a deployment.

Deployment Not Required

Note that the following updates do not require a deployment:

automatic updates to Security Intelligence feeds and additions to the Security Intelligence global Block or Do Not Block list using the context menu
automatic updates to URL filtering data
scheduled geolocation database (GeoDB) updates

Deployment Preview

Preview provides a snapshot of all the policy and object changes to be deployed on the device. The policy changes include the new policies, changes in the existing policies, and the deleted policies. The object changes include the added and modified objects which are used in policies. The unused object changes are not displayed because they are not deployed on the device.

The preview shows all the default values, even when they are not altered, along with the other configured settings when an interface or a platform settings policy is added for the first time. Similarly, the high availability-related policies and default values for settings are shown, even when they are not altered, in the first preview after a high availability pair is configured or disrupted.

To view changes due to an auto rollback, see Edit Deployment Settings.

Unsupported Features

Object additions and attribute changes are displayed in the preview only if the objects are associated with any device or interface. Object deletions are not displayed.
Preview is not supported for the following policies:
- High availability
- Network discovery
- Network analysis
- Device settings
User information at the rule level is not available for intrusion policies.
The preview does not show the reordering of rules across policies.

For DNS policies, reordered rules appear in the preview list as rule additions and deletions. For example, moving a rule from position 1 to position 3 in the rule order is displayed as if the rule was deleted from position 1 and added as a new rule in position 3. Similarly, when a rule is deleted, the rules under it are listed as edited rules as they have changed their positions. The changes are displayed in the final order in which they appear in the policy.
Preview is not supported in the following HA scenarios:
- If a device was in standalone mode and if a chain is made, then an auto-deployment is triggered. For that particular job, preview is not supported. On hover over the Preview (), a message is displayed that it is a HA bootstrap deployment, and no preview is supported.
- Configuration groups - Consider a flow in which a device was initially standalone. Subsequently, three deployments took place. In the fourth deployment, the device was a HA bootstrap deployment. After these, the user deploys devices 5, 6, and 7. The deployment 7 is an HA break deployment, and the user deploys devices 8, 9, and 10.
  
  In this flow, the preview between 3 and 5 is not supported because 4 was a HA deployment. Similarly, the preview between 8 and 3 is also not supported. Preview is supported only from 3 to 1, 7,6, 5, 4, and 10, 9, and 8.
- If a device is broken (HA is broken) then the new device is considered as a fresh device.

Selective Policy Deployment

The management center allows you to select a specific policy within the list of all the changes on the device that are due for deployment and deploy only the selected policy. Selective deployment is available only for the following policies:

Access control policies
Intrusion policies
Malware and file policies
DNS policies
Identity policies
SSL policies
QoS policies
Prefilter policies
Network discovery
NAT policies
Routing policies
VPN policies

There are certain limitations to selectively deploying policies. Follow the contents in the table below to understand when selective policy deployment can be used.

Table 1. Limitations for Selective Deployment
Type	Description	Scenarios
Full deployment	Full deployment is necessary for specific deploy scenarios, and the management center does not support selective deployment in such scenarios. If you encounter an error in such scenarios, you may choose to proceed by selecting all the changes for deployment on the device.	Scenarios wherein a full deployment is required are: The first deployment after you have upgraded the threat defense or the management center. The first deployment after you have restored the threat defense. The first deployment after modifications in the threat defense interface settings. The first deployment after modifications in the virtual router settings. When the threat defense device is moved to a new domain (global to sub-domain or sub-domain to global).
Associated policy deployment	The management center identifies interdependent policies which are interlinked. When one of the interlinked policies is selected, the remaining interlinked policies are automatically selected.	Scenarios wherein an associated policy is automatically selected: When a new object is associated with an existing policy. When an existing policy's object is modified. Scenarios wherein multiple policies are automatically selected: When a new object is associated with an existing policy, and the same object is already associated with other policies, all the associated policies are automatically selected. When a shared object is modified, all the associated policies are automatically selected.
Interdependent policy changes (shown using color-coded tags)	The management center dynamically detects dependencies in-between policies, and between the shared objects and the policies. The interdependency of the objects or policies is shown using color-coded tags.	Scenarios wherein color-coded interdependent policies or objects are automatically selected: When all the out-of-date policies have interdependent changes. For example, when an access control policy, an intrusion policy, and a NAT policy are out-of-date. Since access control policy and NAT policy share an object, all policies are selected together for deployment. When all out-of-date policies share an object, and the object is modified.
Access Policy Group specifications	Access Policy Group policies are listed together in the preview window under Access Policy Group when you click View ().	The scenarios and the expected behavior for Access Policy Group policies are: If the access control policy is out-of-date, all other out-of-date policies under this group, except file policy and intrusion policy, are selected when the access control policy is selected for deployment. However, if the access control policy is out-of-date, intrusion and file policies can be individually selected or deselected irrespective of whether the access control policy is selected or not, unless there are any dependent changes. For example, if a new intrusion policy is assigned to an access control rule, it indicates that there are dependent changes, then both the access control policy and the intrusion policy will be automatically selected when either of them is selected. If no access control policy is out-of-date, other out-of-date policies in this group can be selected and deployed individually.

System Username

The management center displays the username as system for the following operations:

Rollback
Upgrade
Threat Defense backup and restore
SRU update
LSP update
VDB update

Auto-Enabling of Application Detectors

If you are performing application control but disable required detectors, the system automatically enables the appropriate system-provided detectors upon policy deploy. If none exist, the system enables the most recently modified user-defined detector for the application.

Asset Rediscovery with Network Discovery Policy Changes

When you deploy changes to a network discovery policy, the system deletes and then rediscovers MAC address, TTL, and hops information from the network map for the hosts in your monitored networks. Also, the affected managed devices discard any discovery data that has not yet been sent to the management center.

Snort Restart Scenarios

When the traffic inspection engine referred to as the Snort process on a managed device restarts, inspection is interrupted until the process resumes. Whether traffic drops during this interruption or passes without further inspection depends on how the target device handles traffic. See Snort Restart Traffic Behavior for more information. Additionally, resource demands may result in a small number of packets dropping without inspection when you deploy, regardless of whether the Snort process restarts.

Any of the scenarios in the following table cause the Snort process to restart.

Table 2. Snort Restart Scenarios
Restart Scenario	More Information
Deploying a specific configuration that requires the Snort process to restart.	Configurations that Restart the Snort Process When Deployed or Activated
Modifying a configuration that immediately restarts the Snort process.	Changes that Immediately Restart the Snort Process
Traffic-activation of the currently deployed Automatic Application Bypass (AAB) configuration.	Configure Automatic Application Bypass
Enabling or disabling "Logging connection events to RAM disk" feature.	See the section Log to Ramdisk in Troubleshoot Drain of FMC Unprocessed Events.

Restart Warnings for Devices

When you deploy, the Inspect Interruption column in the deploy page specifies whether a deployed configuration restarts the Snort process on the threat defense device. When the traffic inspection engine referred to as the Snort process restarts, inspection is interrupted until the process resumes. Whether traffic is interrupted or passes without inspection during the interruption depends on how the device handles traffic. Note that you can proceed with the deployment, cancel the deployment and modify the configuration, or delay the deployment until a time when deploying would have the least impact on your network.

When the Inspect Interruption column indicates Yes and you expand the device configuration listing, the system indicates any specific configuration type that would restart the Snort process with an Inspect Interruption ( inspect interruption icon ). When you hover your mouse over the icon, a message informs you that deploying the configuration may interrupt traffic.

The following table summarizes how the deploy page displays inspection interruption warnings.

Table 3. Inspection Interruption Indicators
Type	Inspect Interruption	Description
Threat Defense	Inspect Interruption ()Yes	At least one configuration would interrupt inspection on the device if deployed, and might interrupt traffic depending on how the device handles traffic. You can expand the device configuration listing for more information.
	--	Deployed configurations will not interrupt traffic on the device.
	Undetermined	The system cannot determine if a deployed configuration may interrupt traffic on the device. Undetermined status is displayed before the first deployment after a software upgrade, or in some cases during a Support call.
	Errors ()	The system cannot determine the status due to an internal error. Cancel the operation and click Deploy again to allow the system to redetermine the Inspect Interruption status. If the problem persists, contact Support.
sensor	--	The device identified as sensor is not the threat defense device; the system does not determine if a deployed configuration may interrupt traffic on this device.

For information on all configurations that restart the Snort process for all device types, see Configurations that Restart the Snort Process When Deployed or Activated.

Inspect Traffic During Policy Apply

Inspect traffic during policy apply is an advanced access control policy general setting that allows managed devices to inspect traffic while deploying configuration changes; this is the case unless a configuration that you deploy requires the Snort process to restart. You can configure this option as follows:

Enabled — Traffic is inspected during the deployment unless certain configurations require the Snort process to restart.

When the configurations you deploy do not require a Snort restart, the system initially uses the currently deployed access control policy to inspect traffic, and switches during deployment to the access control policy you are deploying.
Disabled — Traffic is not inspected during the deployment. The Snort process always restarts when you deploy.

The following graphic illustrates how Snort restarts can occur when you enable or disable Inspect traffic during policy apply.

Caution

When you deploy, resource demands may result in a small number of packets dropping without inspection. Additionally, deploying some configurations restarts the Snort process, which interrupts traffic inspection. Whether traffic drops during this interruption or passes without further inspection depends on how the target device handles traffic. See Snort Restart Traffic Behavior and Configurations that Restart the Snort Process When Deployed or Activated.

Snort Restart Traffic Behavior

The following tables explain how different devices handle traffic when the Snort process restarts.

Table 4. The Threat Defense and the Threat Defense Virtual Restart Traffic Effects
Interface Configuration	Restart Traffic Behavior
inline: Snort Fail Open: Down: disabled	dropped
inline: Snort Fail Open: Down: enabled	passed without inspection Some packets can be delayed in buffer for several seconds before the system recognizes that Snort is down. This delay can vary depending upon the load distribution. However, the buffered packets are eventually passed.
routed, transparent (including EtherChannel, redundant, subinterface): preserve-connection enabled (configure snort preserve-connection enable ; default) For more information, see Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense Command Reference.	existing TCP/UDP flows: passed without inspection so long as at least one packet arrives while Snort is down new TCP/UDP flows and all non-TCP/UDP flows: dropped Note that the following traffic drops even when preserve-connection is enabled: plaintext, passthrough prefilter tunnel traffic that matches an Analyze rule action or an Analyze all tunnel traffic default policy action connections that do not match an access control rule and are instead handled by the default action. decrypted TLS/SSL traffic a safe search flow a captive portal flow
routed, transparent (including EtherChannel, redundant, subinterface): preserve-connection disabled (configure snort preserve-connection disable )	dropped
inline: tap mode	egress packet immediately, copy bypasses Snort
passive	uninterrupted, not inspected

Note

In addition to traffic handling when the Snort process is down while it restarts, traffic can also pass without inspection or drop when the Snort process is busy, depending on the configuration of the Snort Fail Open Busy option (see Configure an Inline Set). A device supports either the Failsafe option or the Snort Fail Open option, but not both.

Note

When the Snort process is busy but not down during configuration deployment, some packets may drop on routed, switched, or transparent interfaces if the total CPU load exceeds 60 percent.

Warning

Do not reboot the system while the Snort Rule Update is in progress.

Snort-busy drops happen when snort is not able to process the packets fast enough. Lina does not know whether Snort is busy due to processing delay, or if is stuck or due to call blocking. When transmission queue is full, snort-busy drops occur. Based on Transmission queue utilization, Lina will try to access if the queue is being serviced smoothly.

Configurations that Restart the Snort Process When Deployed or Activated

Deploying any of the following configurations except AAB restarts the Snort process as described. Deploying AAB does not cause a restart, but excessive packet latency activates the currently deployed AAB configuration, causing a partial restart of the Snort process.

Access Control Policy Advanced Settings

Deploy when Inspect Traffic During Policy Apply is disabled.
Add or remove an SSL policy.

File Policy

Deploy the first or last of any one of the following configurations; note that while otherwise deploying these file policy configurations does not cause a restart, deploying non-file-policy configurations can cause restarts.

Take either of the following actions:
- Enable or disable Inspect Archives when the deployed access control policy includes at least one file policy.
- Add the first or remove the last file policy rule when Inspect Archives is enabled (note that at least one rule is required for Inspect Archives to be meaningful).
Enable or disable Store files in a Detect Files or Block Files rule.
Add the first or remove the last active file rule that combines the Malware Cloud Lookup or Block Malware rule action with an analysis option (Spero Analysis or MSEXE, Dynamic Analysis, or Local Malware Analysis) or a store files option (Malware, Unknown, Clean, or Custom).

Note that access control rules that deploy these file policy configurations to security zones or tunnel zones cause a restart only when your configuration meets the following conditions:

Source or destination security zones in your access control rule must match the security zones associated with interfaces on the target devices.
Unless the destination zone in you access control rule is any, a source tunnel zone in the rule must match a tunnel zone assigned to a tunnel rule in the prefilter policy.

Identity Policy

When SSL decryption is disabled (that is, when the access control policy does not include an SSL policy), add the first or remove the last active authentication rule.

An active authentication rule has either an Active Authentication rule action, or a Passive Authentication rule action with Use active authentication if passive or VPN identity cannot be established selected.

Network Discovery

Enable or disable non-authoritative, traffic-based user detection over the HTTP, FTP, or MDNS protocols, using the network discovery policy.

Device Management

MTU: Change the highest MTU value among all non-management interfaces on a device.
Automatic Application Bypass (AAB): The currently deployed AAB configuration activates when a malfunction of the Snort process or a device misconfiguration causes a single packet to use an excessive amount of processing time. The result is a partial restart of the Snort process to alleviate extremely high latency or prevent a complete traffic stall. This partial restart causes a few packets to pass without inspection, or drop, depending on how the device handles traffic.

Updates

System update: Deploy configurations the first time after a software update that includes a new version of the Snort binary or data acquisition library (DAQ).
VDB: For managed devices running Snort 2, deploying configurations the first time after installing a vulnerability database (VDB) update that includes changes applicable to managed devices will require a detection engine restart and may result in a temporary traffic interruption. For these, a message warns you when you select the management center to begin installing. The deploy dialog provides additional warnings for the threat defense devices when VDB changes are pending. VDB updates that apply only to the management center do not cause detection engine restarts, and you cannot deploy them.

For managed devices running Snort 3, deploying configurations the first time after installing a vulnerability database (VDB) update may temporarily interrupt application detection, but there will be no traffic interruptions.

Changes that Immediately Restart the Snort Process

The following changes immediately restart the Snort process without going through the deploy process. How the restart affects traffic depends on how the target device handles traffic. See Snort Restart Traffic Behavior for more information.

Take any of the following actions involving applications or application detectors:
- Activate or deactivate a system or custom application detector.
- Delete an activated custom detector.
- Save and Reactivate an activated custom detector.
- Create a user-defined application.
A message warns you that continuing restarts the Snort process, and allows you to cancel; the restart occurs on any managed device in the current domain or in any of its child domains.
Create or break a threat defense high availability pair.

A message warns you that continuing to create a high availability pair restarts the Snort process on the primary and secondary devices and allows you to cancel.

Requirements and Prerequisites for Policy Management

Model Support

Any.

Supported Domains

Any

User Roles

Admin
Network Admin
Security Approver

Best Practices for Deploying Configuration Changes

The following are guidelines for deploying configuration changes.

Reliable Management Connection

The management connection between the management center and the device is a secure, TLS-1.3-encrypted communication channel between itself and the device.

You do not need to run this traffic over an additional encrypted tunnel such as Site-to-Site VPN for security purposes. If the VPN goes down, for example, you will lose your management connection, so we recommend a simple management path.

Caution

We recommend against a device's management connection going through a VPN tunnel that terminates on the device itself. If you deploy a configuration change that causes the VPN to go down, the management connection will be disconnected and you will not have any way to recover the configuration without connecting directly to the device.

If management traffic exits a VPN-terminating interface, be sure to exclude the management traffic from the VPN tunnel.

Maximum Concurrent Deployments

You should not deploy to more than 25% of the maximum devices allowed for a management center in the same job. For example, for the FMCv300, the maximum job size should be 75 devices (25% of 300). Concurrent deployment to more devices can cause performance issues.

Deployment of Shared Policies

For best performance, deploy to devices that use the same policies. Create separate deployment jobs for each group of devices that share policies.

Time to Deploy and Memory Limitations

The time it takes to deploy depends on multiple factors, including (but not limited to):

The configurations you send to the device. For example, if you dramatically increase the number of Security Intelligence entries you block, deployment can take longer.
Device model and memory. On lower-memory devices, deploying can take longer.

Do not exceed the capability of your devices. If you exceed the maximum number of rules or policies supported by a target device, the system displays a warning. The maximum depends on a number of factors—not only memory and the number of processors on the device, but also on policy and rule complexity. For information on optimizing policies and rules, see Best Practices for Access Control Rules.

Use a Maintenance Window to Lessen the Impact of Traffic Interruptions

We strongly recommend you deploy in a maintenance window or at a time when interruptions will have the least impact.

For the threat defense devices, the Inspect Interruption column in the Deploy dialog warns you when deploying might interrupt traffic flow or inspection. You can either proceed with, cancel, or delay deployment; see Restart Warnings for Devices for more information.

Deploy the Configuration

After you configure your deployment, and any time you change that configuration, you must deploy the changes to affected devices. You can view deployment status in the Message Center.

Deploying updates the following components:

Device and interface configurations
Device-related policies: NAT, VPN, QoS, platform settings
Access control and related policies: DNS, file, identity, intrusion, network analysis, prefilter, SSL
Network discovery policy
Intrusion rule updates
Configurations and objects associated with any of these elements

You can configure the system to deploy automatically by scheduling a deploy task or by setting the system to deploy when importing intrusion rule updates. Automating policy deployment is especially useful if you allow intrusion rule updates to modify system-provided base policies for intrusion and network analysis. Intrusion rule updates can also modify default values for the advanced preprocessing and performance options in your access control policies.

Deploy Configuration Changes

After you change configurations, deploy them to the affected devices. We strongly recommend that you deploy in a maintenance window or at a time when any interruptions to traffic flow and inspection will have the least impact.

Caution

Before you begin

Be sure all managed devices use the same revision of the Security Zones object. If you have edited security zone objects: Do not deploy configuration changes to any device until you edit the zone setting for interfaces on all devices you want to sync. You must deploy to all managed devices at the same time.
To preview the deployment changes, enable REST API access. To enable the REST API access, follow the steps in Enabling REST API Access in the Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center Administration Guide.

Note

The deployment process fails if the device configuration is being read at the device CLI during deployment. Do not execute commands such as show running-config during the deployment.

Procedure

Step 1

On the management center menu bar, click Deploy.

Step 2

For a quick deployment, check specific devices and then click Deploy, or click Deploy All to deploy to all devices. Otherwise, for additional deployment options, click Advanced Deploy.

The rest of this procedure applies to the Advanced Deploy screen.

Step 3

Click Expand Arrow ( expand arrow icon ) to view device-specific configuration changes to be deployed.

The Modified By column lists the users who have modified the policies or objects. On expanding the device listing, you can view the users who have modified the policies against each policy listing. For information about when the System user is shown (instead of the logged-in user), see System Username.

Note

Usernames are not provided for deleted policies and objects.

The Inspect Interruption column indicates if traffic inspection interruption may be caused in the device during deployment.

When the status indicates (Yes) that deploying will interrupt inspection, and perhaps traffic, on the threat defense device, the expanded list indicates the specific configurations causing the interruption with the Inspect Interruption ().

If the entry is blank in this column for a device, then it indicates that there will be no traffic inspection interruptions on that device during deployment.

See Restart Warnings for Devices for information to help you identify configurations that interrupt traffic inspection and might interrupt traffic when deployed to the threat defense devices.
The Last Modified Time column specifies when you last made the configuration changes.
The Preview column allows you to preview the changes for the next deployment.
The Status column provides the status for each deployment. For more information, see View Deployment Status.

Step 4

In the Preview column, click Preview ( preview icon ) to see the configuration changes that you can deploy.

Note

If you change the management center name in System ( system gear icon ) > Configuration > Information, the deployment preview does not specify this change, yet it requires a deployment.

For unsupported features for Preview, see Deployment Preview.

The Comparison View tab lists all the policy and object changes. The left pane lists all the different policy types that have changed on the device, organized in a tree structure.

The Filter icon () lets you filter the policies at the user level and policy level.

The right pane lists all the additions, changes, or deletions in the policy, or the object selected in the left pane. The two columns on the right pane provide the last deployed configuration settings (in the Deployed Version column) versus the changes that are due for deployment (in the Version on Firewall Management Center column). The last-deployed configuration settings are derived from a snapshot of the last saved deployment in the management center and not from the device. The background colors of the settings are color-coded as per the legend available on the top-right of the page.

The Modified By column lists the users who have modified, or added the configuration settings. At the policy level, the management center displays all the users who have modified the policy, and at the rule level, the management center displays only the last user who has modified the rule.

You can download a copy of the change log by clicking the Download Report button.

The Advanced View tab shows the CLI commands that will be applied. This view is useful if you are familiar with ASA CLI, which is used on the back end of the threat defense.

Step 5

Use Show or Hide Policy ( Show or Hide Policy icon ) to selectively view or hide the associated unmodified policies.

Step 6

Check the box next to the device name to deploy all configuration changes, or click Policy selection ( policy selection icon ) to select individual policies or configurations to deploy while withholding the remaining changes without deploying them.

You can also view the interdependent changes for a certain policy or configuration using this option. The management center dynamically detects dependencies between policies (for example, between an access control policy and an intrusion policy), and between the shared objects and the policies. Interdependent changes are indicated using color-coded tags to identify a set of interdependent deployment changes. When one of the deployment changes is selected, the interdependent changes are automatically selected.

For more details, see Selective Policy Deployment.

Note

When the changes in shared objects are deployed, the impacted policies should also be deployed along with them. When you select a shared object during deployment, the impacted policies are automatically selected.
Selective deployment is not supported for scheduled deployments and deployments using REST APIs. You can only opt for complete deployment of all the changes in these cases.
The pre-deployment checks for warnings and errors are performed not only on the selected policies, but on all the policies that are out-of-date. Therefore, the warnings or errors list shows the deselected policies as well.
Similarly, the Inspect Interruption column indication on the Deployment page considers all out-of-date policies and not just the selected policies. For information on the Inspect Interruption column, see Restart Warnings for Devices.

Step 7

After you select the devices or policies to deploy, click Estimate to get a rough estimate of the deployment duration.

The time duration is a rough estimate (having around 70% accuracy), and the actual time taken for deployment may vary for a few scenarios. The estimate is dependable for deployments of up to 20 devices.

When an estimate is not available, it indicates that the data is not available, since the first successful deployment on the selected device is pending. This situation could occur after the management center reimage, version upgrade, or after a high availability failover.

Note

The estimate is incorrect and unreliable for bulk policy changes (in case of bulk policy migrations), and selective deployments because the estimate is based on the heuristic technique.

Step 8

Click Deploy.

Step 9

If the system identifies errors or warnings in the changes to be deployed, it displays them in the Validation Messages window. To view complete details, click the arrow icon before the warnings or errors.

You have the following choices:

Deploy—Continue deploying without resolving warning conditions. Check the Ignore warnings checkbox, to ignore warnings and deploy the changes. You cannot proceed if the system identifies errors.
Close—Exit without deploying. Resolve the error and warning conditions, and attempt to deploy the configuration again.

What to do next

(Optional) Monitor deployment status; see Viewing Deployment Messages in the Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center Administration Guide.
If the deployment fails, see Best Practices for Deploying Configuration Changes.

During deployment, if there are specific configuration changes in the deployment, the deployment failure may lead to traffic being interrupted. For example, in a cluster environment, an erroneous configuration of an IP address that is not in the same subnet as the Site IPs is configured on the interface. Due to this error, deployment fails and the device attempts to clear the configuration while the rollback operation is being processed. These events collectively lead to a deployment failure that interrupts the traffic.

See the following table to know what configuration changes may cause traffic interruption when deployment fails.


Configuration Changes	Exists?	Traffic Impacted?
Threat Defense Service changes in an access control policy	Yes	Yes
VRF	Yes	Yes
Interface	Yes	Yes
QoS	Yes	Yes

Note

The configuration changes interrupting traffic during deployment is valid only if both the management center and the threat defense are of version 6.2.3 or higher.

Redeploy Existing Configurations to a Device

You can force-deploy existing (unchanged) configurations to a single managed device. We strongly recommend you deploy in a maintenance window or at a time when any interruptions to traffic flow and inspection will have the least impact.

Caution