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Automation
500+ healthcare firewalls upgraded in less than 3 months
Who the client is
A healthcare enterprise that runs a large fleet of next-generation firewalls: standalone units and HA pairs, physical appliances and software firewalls on different virtualization platforms. Those firewalls protect the networks its healthcare services run on, so the organisation relies on them staying available through every change.
The challenge
With a fleet this size, keeping software up to date on every firewall was difficult. Healthcare services leave little room for interruption, so each upgrade had to run with minimal downtime and the highest possible success rate. The mix of standalone firewalls and HA pairs, physical and software appliances, across different virtualization platforms, meant one upgrade procedure had to handle every variant safely.
What was at risk:
- Healthcare service continuity during upgrades, and firewalls left on outdated software across a fleet too large to keep current
What we did
- Built a customer-tailored automation solution for safe, mass next-generation firewall upgrades on open-source tools and libraries
- Covered standalone firewalls and HA pairs, physical and virtual, with failover so upgrades run with no downtime
- Checked each firewall’s readiness before the upgrade, and ran comparison tests afterwards to confirm it returned to normal
- Added automated backups and manual rollback, so any issue with an update could be addressed quickly
- Ran workflows in parallel to fit more upgrades into each maintenance window
How it works
Each firewall goes through the same guarded sequence, run in parallel across the fleet inside a maintenance window.
- Readiness check Before anything changes, the automation confirms the firewall is ready for the update.
- Backup The configuration is backed up automatically, so there is always a known state to return to.
- Upgrade The new software is installed on standalone firewalls and HA pairs alike, physical or virtual, with HA pairs failing over so the service stays up.
- Comparison test After the upgrade, comparison tests check that the firewall is back to its normal state.
- Rollback If an update causes an issue, the backup supports a quick manual rollback.
Outcomes
Scale and portability
500+ (firewalls)
A healthcare enterprise's whole fleet upgraded in under 3 months, up to 100 firewalls per window.
Technical
Up to 100
Parallel workflows upgraded up to 100 firewalls in a single maintenance window.
Business
Lower downtime risk
Reduced downtime risk protected healthcare service continuity and operational resilience.
Tech & stack
Python
Ansible
AWX- Next-generation firewalls
- Standalone and HA pairs
- Physical and virtual appliances
Anonymized example — fuller write-up available on request.
