Inheriting Settings

On the Policies panel, in the System > Tools screen, you can apply inheritance filters at a global, group, or appliance level. You can select an existing inheritance filter and customize which of its rules are actually inherited. You can do this on the fly, without the need to create an entirely separate filter.

For more information on inheritance, refer to Configuring Inheritance Filters .

To apply the inheritance filters, complete the following steps:

1	Expand the System tree and click Tools. The Tools page displays.

 

2	Select the appropriate radio button for either forward or reverse inheritance. Use the Filter drop down menu to select the desired filter to apply. Click Preview to proceed to the “Preview of Inheritance Settings” window.

NOTE: When configuring forward inheritance at the group level, all selected settings are pushed to all units in the group.

 

3	Review the settings to be inherited. You can continue with all of the default screens selected for inheritance or select only specific screens for inheritance by checking boxes next to the desired settings.

NOTE: The Preview panel footer states, “All referring objects should also be selected as part of the settings picked, to avoid any dependency errors while inheriting.” If the user deselects dependent screen data, the settings will not inherit properly.

4

If the user is attempting forward inheritance, they might click “Update” to proceed. If the user is attempting to reverse inherit settings, an additional selection must be made at the bottom of the Preview panel. The user must select either to update the chosen settings to only the target parent node, or to update the target parent node along with all unit nodes under it. After the user makes this selection, they might click “Update” to proceed, or “Reset” to edit previous selections.

 

5

If the user selects to update the target parent node and all unit nodes, a “Modify Task Description and Schedule” panel opens in place of the Preview panel (This panel will not appear if the user selects “Update only target parent node”). If the “Modify Task Description and Schedule” panel opens, the user can edit the task description in the “Description” field. They might also adjust the schedule for inheritance, or continue with the default scheduling. If the user chooses to edit the timing by clicking on the arrow next to “Schedule,” a calendar expands allowing the user to click on a radio button for “Immediate” execution, or to select an alternate day and time for inheritance to occur.

6	After the user has completed any edits, they select either “Accept” or “Cancel” to execute or cancel the scheduled inheritance, respectively.

 

After the inheritance operation begins, a progress bar appears, along with text stating the operation might take a few minutes, depending on the volume of data to be inherited.

After the inheritance operation is complete, the desired settings from the unit or group node should now be updated and reflected in the parent node’s settings, as well as in the settings of all other units, if selected.

NOTE: For the Access/Services and Access/Rules pages, by default, inheriting group settings overwrites the values at the unit level with the group values. If you wish for Dell SonicWALL GMS to append the group settings to the values at the unit level, you need to enable the Append Group Settings option on the General/GMS Settings page on the Console Panel.

For more information on inheritance, refer to Configuring Inheritance Filters .