Administrator Guide

Fabric OS Administrator’s Guide 153
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IP Filter policy
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Fabric-wide distribution of the Auth policy
The AUTH policy can be manually distributed to the fabric by command; there is no support for
automatic distribution. To distribute the AUTH policy, see “Distributing the local ACL policies” on
page 160 for instructions.
Local Switch configuration parameters are needed to control whether a switch accepts or rejects
distributions of the AUTH policy using the distribute command and whether the switch may initiate
distribution of the policy. To set the local switch configuration parameter, refer to “Policy database
distribution” on page 158.
IP Filter policy
The IP Filter policy is a set of rules applied to the IP management interfaces as a packet filtering
firewall. The firewall permits or denies the traffic to go through the IP management interfaces
according to the policy rules.
Fabric OS supports multiple IP Filter policies to be defined at the same time. Each IP Filter policy is
identified by a name and has an associated type. Two IP Filter policy types, IPv4 and IPv6, exist to
provide separate packet filtering for IPv4 and IPv6. It is not allowed to specify an IPv6 address in
the IPv4 filter, or specify an IPv4 address in the IPv6 filter. There can be up to six different IP Filter
policies defined for both types. Only one IP Filter policy for each IP type can be activated on the
affected management IP interfaces.
Audit messages will be generated for any changes to the IP Filter policies.
The rules in the IP Filter policy are examined one at a time until the end of the list of rules. For
performance reasons, the most important rules must be specified at the top.
On a chassis system, changes to persistent IP Filter policies are automatically synchronized to the
standby CP when the changes are saved persistently on the active CP. The standby CP will enforce
the filter policies to its management interface after policies are synchronized with the active CP.
Virtual Fabric considerations: Each logical switch cannot have its own different IP Filter policies. IP
Filter policies are treated as a chassis-wide configuration and are common for all the logical
switches in the chassis.
Creating an IP Filter policy
You can create an IP Filter policy specifying any name and using type IPv4 or IPv6. The policy
created is stored in a temporary buffer, and is lost if the current command session logs out. The
policy name is a unique string composed of a maximum of 20 alpha, numeric, and underscore
characters. The names default_ipv4 and default_ipv6 are reserved for default IP filter policies. The
policy name is case-insensitive and always stored as lowercase. The policy type identifies the policy
as an IPv4 or IPv6 filter. There can be a maximum of six IP Filter policies created for both types.
1. Log in to the switch using an account assigned to the admin role.
2. Enter in the ipFilter
--create command.