This is an original planning guide. It is not a vendor manual, an official standard, or legal advice. Example addresses use documentation ranges. Review every command before you paste it.
What this hour is for
Cleanup means a rule that no longer matches a current service is removed or narrowed. The optimizer and the diff draft a reading of a policy you paste. Paste a policy you are allowed to hold, with secrets removed.
A rule with no hits still might be the break-glass path. Write why it stays or why it goes. Do not delete the rule that keeps you from locking yourself out. Any-to-any does not stay because it had hits.
One rule. Installing or committing the whole cleaned policy is a later window with the previous revision saved. This hour produces the candidate and the reason.
Do not use the diff to weaken a rule so a test succeeds.
The change you can finish
Apply nothing during the writing of the note. When the lab window opens, it is one change on the device named in the ticket. Read the draft, then the device, then decide.
Rollback is the file or the revision you saved first. You do not invent a rollback after the only copy is gone.
- Confirm the policy is yours.
- Redact secrets.
- Pick one stale rule.
- Write hit count and the reason.
- Keep a management path.
- Do not commit in this hour.
Mistakes that outlive the command
Firewall Rule Cleanup Best Practices goes wrong in a small set of ways. The list is here so the ticket can forbid them before the window.
- A policy you do not administer.
- Any-to-any kept because it matched.
- The management rule deleted.
- A commit with no previous revision.
- A secret left in the paste.
Decisions to write down
One decision for Firewall Rule Cleanup Best Practices: The policy is yours. One rule is named. The reason is written. Management remains. And nothing was committed.
Checks before you call it done
Confirm this before you call the change done: One rule is in the note. Hits or the exception are written. Secrets are absent. The previous revision is named. And no install happened. If one of those fails, stop.
Before you leave the device
Firewall Rule Cleanup Best Practices ends when the hostname on the device matches the hostname in the ticket. If it does not, you are on the wrong box. Stop. A command that succeeded on the wrong box is not progress.
The draft stays a draft until a person has read the names in it. A generator does not log into the device and does not know which interface is the uplink. You delete a line that names a device, a zone, or a prefix you did not write down.
0.0.0.0/0 is not kept because a sample included it. A source you can say is the source you keep. 192.0.2.0/24, 198.51.100.0/24, 203.0.113.0/24, and 2001:db8::/32 are documentation. They belong in the note. They are not prefixes you type onto a production device because they appeared in a draft.
prompt-for-this is a reminder that a secret is missing. It is not a password, a key, a community string, or a pre-shared key you save in the ticket or in git. The real secret stays in the store.
One change is the window. A VLAN and a routing protocol and a VPN do not share it. If two things move and the result is wrong, you will not know which one did it. The next feature waits for its own page.
If the same step fails twice, stop for the day. The failure is the result. Adding a forum command beside a half-applied config produces a device nobody can rebuild. Restore the copy you took first.
A second person reads the device name and the change aloud. If they cannot find them in the ticket, the note is not done. Silence is not agreement. Then leave the device alone.
This page is a planning guide. It is not a vendor manual, not an official standard, and not a permission to touch a network you do not administer. The pillar guide owns the wider design. This page owns one lab proof.
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