Astaro would like to invite you to join us in testing our next major version of our Security Gateway product. Over the past 18 months our developers have been hard at work: Astaro Security Gateway Version 8 introduces a new Kernel, 64-Bit Support, IPv6, a refreshed WebAdmin, New Reports, and many other exciting things designed to solve problems and secure your network. A Public Beta of ASG V8 is available immediately, allowing you to test our current progress of this release and refine/shape its development during the next months along its path to General Availability.
At Astaro, our goal is to build products that people want to buy, and have features our customers actually use. We listen to the feedback of our community, and ASG V8 is designed with your requirements in mind. Throughout this process, you can contribute, read the comments of others, and keep up-to-date on the latest Beta happenings at our New V8 Public Beta Forum. There you will find full details and ongoing discussions and news about the ASG Version 8 Public Beta.
The V8 Beta program will have some different details compared to our past Betas; it isn't quite feature-complete yet. Rather than bake everything to an almost-done state and unleash it all on you to test at once, we are starting this Beta a bit early and will add a few more things to it during the next few months leading up to release. Anyone can test out the V8 Beta, if you would like to know more about how get the Beta Version and contribute your findings, just read on!
For the best Beta experience, a list of the new things, and other useful information, you should read this forum post in its entirety.
We'll start with a small disclaimer – ASG V8 is a BETA and not final, production-ready software. This is a work-in-progress; there will be bugs, broken areas of functionality, and parts where things just do not work as expected or planned. If you decide to use this someplace in production and it causes things to go horribly wrong, well…you were warned. By offering you the chance to test the product early you need to be aware that you will see stability and completeness issues.
We use this opportunity to discover and quash bugs that we might not have otherwise discovered during our own testing. We also greatly appreciate your feedback and comments and will use them to further shape our product. The V8 Beta is also not yet complete, there are still features and areas of functionality we are working on which are not yet ready for you to test, we will make additions and add more to play with as the Beta progresses! Being a Beta, be aware that much of the documentation and associated collateral's, online-help, language translations, and other written support information are not yet available.
ASG V8 Summary Feature Overview
Here is a summary list of new things currently in the V8 Beta. For all the details about this Beta release and a description of these new features, you should please visit the overview posting here.
Major New Things
- New Kernel
- New Hardware Compatibility (take a look at our new HCL and Knowledge Base here)
- New Installer
- IPv6 Support
- HTTP Reverse Proxy/Web Application Firewall
- Updated WebAdmin
- WebAdmin Change Tracking
- VPN Remote Access Reporting
- Web Content Filter Override
Minor New Things
- WebAdmin Menu Search
- WebAdmin Error Handling
- Flash-Based Reporting Charts
- Syslogging
- Reverse DNS
- IPSec VPN PSK Enhancements
- Intrusion Prevention Exceptions
- Intrusion Prevention Updates
- Updated Online Help
Download Information
The first public Beta release dubbed V7.900 is available for both ASG Appliances and your own hardware. If you were using a past release of the V8 alpha, you will notice your installation has the 7.900 available as an Up2Date. To use the V8 Beta ISO image, you need to download it, burn it to a CD, and install it, then restore a backup or build anew.
V8 Image for ASG Software on your own machine
ftp://ftp.astaro.de/pub/Astaro_Security_Gateway/v8/beta/asg-7.900-7.1.iso
ISO size: 303MB (317517824 bytes)
ISO md5sum: b621d6a8aaeeea919b1ce3daff8e50df
V8 Image for ASG Hardware appliances
ftp://ftp.astaro.de/pub/Astaro_Security_Gateway/v8/beta/ssi-7.900-7.1.iso
ISO size: 304MB (318775296 bytes)
ISO md5sum: 2625200d209d336a070dc73627eae0c0
To accommodate testing throughout the Beta period, we have made available full-featured testing licenses for the software ISO here and all ASG appliances here. They are also available via the V8 Beta Forums overview post. ASG Version 8 will only support the new licensing model from Astaro.
Cheers,
Myself and the entire Astaro 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 ASG Version 8 Public Beta Begins