Astaro is pleased to announce the availability of the Astaro Command Center V1.9 BETA release and invites you to participate in the Astaro BETA Test Program, where you have the chance to win Amazon Gift Certificates!
The ACC V1.9 BETA will run from July 31th through August 29th. The results will be of huge value in order to discover possible malfunctions at a very early stage and hence significantly increase the stability and reliability of the final software release. By participating in the beta program, you have the chance to win one of three Amazon Gift Certificates, depending on your feedback you are providing to Astaro during the beta phase. The following sections will provide an overview about new features included, as well as all information you need to download, install and test the new software. After you have successfully installed the beta software, you are able to conduct individual tests at your own discretion.
What's new in ACC V1.9?
The new version offers a re-designed Interface and is split into the “WebAdmin” and “Gateway Manager”.
Administrative GUI split:
- WebAdmin (Port 4444): Is responsible for the ACC system settings.
- Gateway Manager (Port 4422): Is responsible for monitoring and managing connected Astaro Gateways.
Furthermore, V1.9 offers many feature and usability enhancements as well as bug fixes. The new version provides the following major enhancements:
WebAdmin (System Settings):
Directory / Authentication Support
Administrators and Users of the ACC are now able to authenticate against existing Active Directory, eDirectory, RADIUS, TACACS and LDAP.
Integrated Up2Date mechanism
If a newer version is available for installation, you can update to the latest version by clicking the “Update to latest version now” button.
Backup / Restore
Creating a backup takes a snapshot of the current ACC configuration and adds it to the list of available backups in the WebAdmin interface.
Monitoring / Reporting / Alerting
The ACC illustrates reports about traffic (eth), concurrent connections, CPU-, Memory / Swap-, Partition usage and creates the “executive report”, familiar from Astaro Security Gateway. This Report can be sent at three different intervals (daily, weekly, monthly) to different recipients. Notifications (e.g. for system restart or available Up2Date packages) can also be configured.
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.
Gateway Manager:
New monitoring features
The near real-time monitoring functionality of the ACC offers tactical dashboard and worldmap views with rapid and efficient drill-down capability. 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. Depending on the type of data monitored, those baselines are either short-lived (CPU load average) or worth several days of data collection (Threat Monitoring). Detailed listviews for aspects ranging from Threat and Version Status via License and Resource Usage to an all new Service Monitoring and High-Availability and Cluster Monitoring are provided in a concise and problem-oriented manner. A newly integrated automatic (re-)sorting functionality improves situational awareness by ensuring that Gateways with the highest threat status are put on top within the various views.
Multi-Client Capability:
The access control management, which seamlessly integrates Astaro's sophisticated backend authentication mechanisms, offers multi-client capabilities for Service-Providers. It is possible to create fine-grained access rights to Gateways, based on an easy-to-use but powerful role system which enables a hierarchical administratorship.
Demo System
Please check also the live demo of ACC under http://accdemo.astaro.com
System Requirements
Supported web browsers for “WebAdmin” and “Gateway Manager”: ACC V1.9 supports the following browser/platform combinations:
MS Windows 2000/XP/Vista:
- IE6 or higher (including IE7)
Note: Parallel installations of IE6 and IE7 are not supported! - Mozilla Firefox 2.0 or higher
- Safari 3.0 or higher
Linux:
- Mozilla Firefox 2.0 or higher
Mac OSX:
- Safari 2.0.3 or higher
- Mozilla Firefox 2.0 or higher
Note: The iPhone Safari browser has certain limitations – hence it is not supported. Other browsers could also work, but might be subject to rendering or JavaScript issues. They are unsupported. Java or Flash support is not needed. Because much of the AJAX GUI processing is done by the management workstation instead of the ACC, we recommend using
Firefox 3 on a management workstation with at least 1024 MB RAM and a CPU with 3 GHz. More system performance will increase GUI processing speed significantly.
Upgrade Requirements and Options
General Information
Due to major system architecture changes in the new Astaro Command Center V1.9 and the focus on future extensibility and scalability, only Versions 7.300 and higher will be supported. You can continue using older products with the previous ACC V1.4 which offers backward compatibility, but you cannot benefit from the new features and enhanced capabilities until you update both your Astaro Security Gateway and your ACC installations.
Supported Astaro Security Gateway / Astaro Web Gateway releases
The following versions of Astaro Gateway are supported:
- ASG V7.3 and higher
- AWG V7.3 and higher
Please note, that these versions also offer slow-migration functionality as described below.
Slow Migration
ASG and AWG V7.300 offer the possibility to slow migrate to the new ACC V1.9. You can opt for a slow migration process and update your Astaro Gateway installations step by step to the latest version, which features a dual-ACC support. Within the V7.300 you can choose if you want to connect your Astaro Gateway product to a legacy ACC V1.4 or the newest ACC V1.9, thereby providing you with complete freedom on how and when to update your large installation base.
Hardware requirements
Software Appliance installation
The software needs to be installed on a dedicated Intel compatible PC. For proved hardware components please check our Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) at: http://www.astaro.com/lists/HCL-ACC-V1.txt
Virtual Appliance installation
ACC V1.9 can be installed as a virtual appliance. The following VMware virtualization platforms are supported:
- VMware Player
- VMware Server
- VMware Workstation
- VMware ESX Server
Minimum hardware requirements for the ACC installation
The minimum hardware requirements for Astaro Command Center V1.9 depends on the number of managed devices in use as well as the number of administrators who access the software simultaneously. There are numbers for CPU, RAM, Hard disk and Bandwidth (devices), Bandwidth (clients) respectively.
The requirement starts with a PC with 2GHz CPU, 512 MB RAM and 30 GB HD (for 10 gateways and one simultaneous administrator) and up to a PC with 2x 4x2Ghz CPU, 3 GB RAM and 160 GB HD (for 250 gateways and 10 administrators who access the ACC simultaneously).
Please take a look to our minimum hardware requirements table here: ACC-V1.9-HardwareRequirements.pdf
Conducting beta tests
Limitations and hints With the provided ISO image there may be some limitations (remember: it's a BETA 🙂 )
- Please check the Known Issue List before you test ACC V1.9 BETA.
- ACC V1.9 BETA will not be supported via Astaro's support teams; therefore, you should not use it within productive environments.
- An ACC V1.9 manual and complete Online Help will be available with the GA release.
Software download and installation
Download acc-1.800-080731-1.iso
size: 433 MB (453,761,024 Byte)
md5sum: 3c232a607cfa84175caa540d7fb075bb
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. The ACC framework has been replaced with the tried Astaro V7 framework. Since the V7 framework is based on a licensing system, it is compulsory that a license file is also imported here. 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
Providing Feedback
You can provide your feedback through the following channels: As with earlier versions you can post any feedback and discuss any of the ACC V1.9 BETA features on our User Bulletin Board. There is a separate beta forum where you can participate in the Astaro Command Center V1.9 BETA challenge. Please do not use the General Discussion forum for beta related bugs, even if you do not want to part in the exciting contest. However finding bugs within the new version will be harder than ever as the Astaro R&D team has already put tremendous effort in testing all the new features. Hence all experienced Astaro users are invited to participate in the new Astaro beta challenge:
The Top-3 UBB-posters who reported the highest number of confirmed bugs will win one of three Amazon Gift Certificates.
For more information please see the corresponding UBB-posting at our User Bulletin Board.
Astaro very much appreciates your contribution,
Your Astaro 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 Public ACC V1.9 BETA released