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.

Click the Preview icon next to a deployment job to view the configuration change log for that are pending to be deployed on the device. The change log includes:

  • Comparison View: Displays a side-by-side comparison of all the device configuration changes made since your last deployment.

  • Advanced View: Displays the pending CLI commands to be applied to the device.

For more information about viewing the deployment preview, see Deploy Configuration Changes.

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 (preview icon), 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.