A draft is a distributed firewall configuration that has been published, or saved for publishing at a later date. Drafts are created automatically and manually.

Manual drafts can be edited and saved. Auto drafts can be cloned, and saved as manual drafts, and then edited. The maximum number of drafts that can be saved is 100 autodrafts and 10 manual drafts.

Procedure

  1. Navigate to Security > Distributed Firewall.
  2. To save a firewall configuration manually, go to Actions > Save As Draft.
    A manual draft can be saved, or edited and then saved. After saving, you can revert to the original configuration.
  3. Name the configuration.
  4. To prevent multiple users from opening and editing a manual draft, Lock the configuration, and add a comment.
  5. Click Save.
  6. In 4.1.1 and later, to view the saved configuration, click the Saved Drafts tab. In 4.1 and earlier, to view the saved configuration, select Actions > View.
    To see details such as draft name, date, time and who saved it, point to the dot or star icon of any draft. Saved configurations can be filtered by time, showing all drafts in the last one day, one week, 30 days, or the last three months. They can be filtered by aurodraft and saved by me. They can also be filtered by name, by using the search tool on the top right.
  7. Hover over a draft to view name, date and time details of the saved configuration. Click the name to view draft details.

    The detailed draft view shows the required changes to be made to the current firewall configuration, in order to be in sync with this draft. If this draft is published, all of the changes visible in this view will be applied to the current configuration.

    Clicking the downward arrow expands each section, and displays the added, modified, and deleted changes in each section. The comparison shows added rules with a green bar on the left side of the box, modified elements (such as a name change) have a yellow bar, and deleted elements have a red bar.
  8. To edit the name or description of a selected draft, click the menu icon (three dots) from the View Draft Details window, and select Edit.
    Manual drafts can be locked. If locked, a comment for the draft must be provided.

    Some roles, such as enterprise administrator have full access credentials, and cannot be locked out.

  9. Auto drafts and manual drafts can also be cloned and saved by clicking Clone.
    In 4.1.1 and later, in the Saved Drafts tab you can accept the default name, or edit it. You can also lock the configuration. If locked, a comment for the draft must be provided.

    In 4.1 and earlier, in the Saved Configurations window, you can accept the default name, or edit it.

  10. To save the cloned version of the draft configuration, click Save. The draft is now present in the Saved Drafts.

What to do next

After viewing a draft, you can load and publish it. It is then the active firewall configuration.