We are pleased to announce the availability of the Astaro Command Center V1.9. After a successful BETA period of over 4 weeks with ~300 feedback postings and community suggestions, this version is now ready for download and installation.
This new release focuses on the main areas reliability, scalability, performance and additional features. Also implemented is the split of the graphical user interface (GUI) in “WebAdmin” and “Gateway Manager”.
The Astaro Command Center (ACC) is a centralized management tool for large Astaro Security Gateway (ASG), Astaro Web Gateway (AWG) and Astaro Mail Gateway (AMG) installations.
The main focus of ACC is to:
- simplify strenuous and time-consuming tasks
- allow direct access to application configuration
- provide real-time system status surveillance
- detect possible risks
ACC is browser-based, there is no need to install any client software, not even any java-plugins or flash enhancements. Due to major system architecture changes in the new Astaro Command Center V1.9 and the focus on future extensibility and scalability, only Gateway-Versions 7.300 and higher will be supported.
What's new in ACC V1.9?
GUI split
The WebAdmin (Port 4444) is responsible for the ACC system settings. The Gateway Manager (Port 4422) for monitoring and managing connected Astaro Gateways.
Directory Service integration
Administrators and Users of the ACC are now able to authenticate against existing Directory Services
Monitoring / Reporting / Alerting
The ACC illustrates reports about network traffic, concurrent connections, CPU-, Memory / Swap-, Partition usage and creates the “executive report”, familiar from Astaro Security and Web Gateways.
Network restrictions & Shared Secret
It is now possible to restrict access to the ACC by using network access definitions for Clients and Gateways. You can also activate a Shared Secret authentication scheme requiring both Gateway Manager and connecting devices to exchange a shared common password before communication starts. Enabling or changing this kind of access control requires the same password to be specified in the Central Management configuration of each device requesting access to the ACC.
Trend indicators
In addition to the actual monitoring data, the ACC now augments certain information with trend indicators to show deviations to previously established baselines and historical averages.
Re-sorting
A newly integrated automatic sorting / re-sorting functionality improves situational awareness by ensuring that Gateways with the highest threat status are put on top within the various views.
Filter Bar
A newly integrated filter bar on the top of the monitoring views, allows focusing to specific gateways, which are above a specified threshold value.
Service Monitoring
The ACC V1.9 monitors up to now the running services on the connected gateways. The services are consolidated into 4 groups: – Misc (NTP-, DNS-, DHCP Server) – Network Security (SOCKS Proxy, Intrusion Protection) – Web Security (FTP Proxy, HTTP Proxy) – Mail Security (SMTP Proxy, POP3 Proxy)
Enhanced “Mouseover” details
The “Mouseover functionality” show in different views more exact details, even by pointing with the mouse pointer beyond of the section.
Scheduled operations
The enhanced scheduled operations allow now to set specific weekdays for executing the selected action. It is further on possible to execute these actions once, on a specific day. A detailed description of the new features, changes, system requirements as well as installation and upgrade information is included within the ACC V1.9 Release Notes There is a Quickstart Guide on the installation ISO, but you can download it also here: Quickstart Guide This version is technically a brand new base ground for further developments, an Up2Date package for V1.4 to V1.9 will not be available, please install the new version with our ISO package. An Up2Date for our BETA tester is available (Thank you again!)
Feedback
If you want to provide feedback or want to discuss any of the ACC V1.9 features you should post it on our User Bulletin Board. Please take care to add always(!) the version you refer to (e.g. “[1.9] Worldmap”). If you have feedback to our documentation (Online Help) please send it to documentation@astaro.com. There is also a demo server that showcases all the new shiny things: ACC1.9 Demo All Up2Dates are GNUPG-signed!
Download Information
Download acc-1.900-080910-2.iso
size: 438 MB (459.116.544 Byte)
md5sum: cd1510b792ce6c76ae43965f8c4125fd
Up2Date package for our 1.9 BETA tester (for V1.880):
Download u2d-sys-1.900.tgz.gpg
size: 126 MB (132.347.199 Byte)
md5sum: e99e7fe132485684edd94d350893da70
Astaro FTP server: DE US
Astaro HTTP server: DE 1 DE 2 US 1 US 2
Search for “how to burn” on our Knowledge Base if you have trouble burning a CD from the ISO image. Please note that ACC V1.9 is exempt from charges, according to this, the license is for free! There is no need to request a license, you can download it here:
http://www.astaro.com/lists/Free_License-ACC-V1.txt
Regards (also to CERN 😉 ),
Your Astaro R&D and Product Management Team.
You Can Learn More About the Astaro Internet Security Product Line By Going to www.FirewallShop.com/Astaro.
The original article/video can be found at ACC V1.9 GA released