Configure Object Group Search

While operating, the threat defense device expands access control rules into multiple access control list entries based on the contents of any network or interface objects used in the access rule. You can reduce the memory required to search access control rules by enabling object group search. With object group search enabled, the system does not expand network or interface objects, but instead searches access rules for matches based on those group definitions. Object group search does not impact how your access rules are defined or how they appear in management center. It impacts only how the device interprets and processes them while matching connections to access control rules.

Enabling object group search reduces memory requirements for access control policies that include network or interface objects. However, it is important to note that object group search might also decrease rule lookup performance and thus increase CPU utilization. You should balance the CPU impact against the reduced memory requirements for your specific access control policy. In most cases, enabling object group search provides a net operational improvement.

By default, the object group search is enabled for the threat defense devices that are added for the first time in the management center. In the case of upgraded devices, if the device is configured with disabled object group search, then you need to manually enable it. You can enable it on one device at a time; you cannot enable it globally. We recommend that you enable it on any device to which you deploy access rules that use network or interface objects.

Note

If you enable object group search and then configure and operate the device for a while, be aware that subsequently disabling the feature might lead to undesirable results. When you disable object group search, your existing access control rules will be expanded in the device’s running configuration. If the expansion requires more memory than is available on the device, your device can be left in an inconsistent state and you might see a performance impact. If your device is operating normally, you should not disable object group search once you have enabled it.

Before you begin

Model Support—Threat Defense
We recommend that you also enable transactional commit on each device. From the device CLI, enter the asp rule-engine transactional-commit access-group command.
Changing this setting can be disruptive to system operation while the device recompiles the ACLs. We recommend that you change this setting during a maintenance window.
You can use FlexConfig to configure the object-group-search threshold command to enable a threshold to help prevent performance degradation. When operating with a threshold, for each connection, both the source and destination IP addresses are matched against network objects. If the number of objects matched by the source address times the number matched by the destination address exceeds 10,000, the connection is dropped. Configure your rules to prevent an excessive number of matches.

Procedure

Step 1	Choose Devices > Device Management.
Step 2	Next to the threat defense device where you want to configure the rule, click the Edit ().
Step 3	Click the Device tab, then click the Edit () in the Advanced Settings section.
Step 4	Check Object Group Search.
Step 5	To have object group search work on interface objects in addition to network objects, check Interface Object Optimization. If you do not select Interface Object Optimization, the system deploys separate rules for each source/interface pair, rather that use the security zones and interface groups used in the rules. This means the interface groups are not available for object group search processing.
Step 6	Click Save.