Next-Generation UTM and Firewall Platforms
Since the market opportunity emerged to combine multiple network security products into a single platform, and the term Unified Threat Management or UTM was coined, the all-in-one design has helped businesses minimize management efforts and total cost of ownership (TCO) in their network security.
The market has become saturated with a multitude of 1U choices for VARS and System Integrators designing UTM appliances, most of which provide thin computing capability and limited arrangement to separate the software to get the value of a base system. But for UTM designers that see the market potential beyond a simple web appliance, and thus require platforms that can cope with managing future threat protection scenarios, it would require an underlying dense architecture capable of supporting growing levels of needs for improved context, fast threat detection and automated response. |
Advantech’s portfolio provides the ideal starting point for a range for UTM solutions with 1U Rackmount platforms such as the FWA-3210 and the 2U FWA-6510 supporting a variety of Intel® Xeon® processor options.
For next-generation firewall and UTM solutions to handle upcoming security threats across an organization’s environment in real time, the hardware must offer increased performance and ensure interoperability with the designers’ choice in OS and their Firewall/UTM software. The flexible compatibility of high performance platforms such as the FWA series is made possible with proven Intel® architecture including E3 and E5 Xeon processing and significant ECC memory of up to 384GB DDR3.
The FWA series is unique in the implementation of customizable I/O through Network Mezzanine Card (NMC) architecture. Advantech’s NMC selection provides various network interface options including GbE copper, GbE fiber, 10GbE fiber, and more. As many as 32 x GbE ports can be easily added with the insertion of four 8 x GbE NMCs into the FWA-6510’s four ports in the front of the 2U chassis. Upgrading any of the NMC slots to 2 x 10GbE fiber is achieved by a quick NMC swap-out. Not only does this construction provide rack density, but the ability to customizations for the application without pulling the chassis.
For next-generation firewall and UTM solutions to handle today’s growing security threats across an organization’s environment in real time, the hardware must offer increased performance and ensure interoperability with the designers’ choice in OS and their Firewall/UTM software. This is an increasing factor with the UTM forecast revenue spurning new software companies to bring solutions to market swiftly. But selecting high performance Intel-base systems translates foremost to delivering improved context, faster threat detection and automated response.
Scaleable I/O ports capable of 10GbE or more will be in-line with overall network requirements in big data and cloud web traffic for most enterprises. But end customers will soon be discontent with static Firewall rack system designs as they expect more developments that can offer system-side configurable I/O, preferably to customize on the fly.
