The Next Generation of Untangle Appliances
Integrated Disaster Recovery, Interactive LCD, 6x Giagbit Ethernet, and Dual Lan Bypass Segments
Over the past 6 months we've been working hard behind the scenes to engineer the next generation of our Untangle appliances. We are pleased to announce that our hard work has paid off with the release of the NG series Untangle appliances.
We designed the NG series to be a near plug and play appliance that would fit the needs of any business regardless of their network topology. We are confident that we have succeeded.
The NG Series Untangle appliances allow us to bring some innovative new reliability features to the Untangle market place. The main focus of the NG series was reliability, performance, and ease of use.
The integrated disaster recovery system is one of the features we are most proud of. With this integrated system in place, we have taken disaster recovery and survivability to an entirely different level. The system utilizes a boot-able storage device that is integrated on the main board.The integrated disaster recovery system allows administrators to take snapshots of the appliances hard disk and save them for later restore use. Should an hard disk failure or system corruption occur in the future, the administrator can boot the disaster recovery system and restore the system using the stored image. The process is very fast and takes only minutes to complete. The system is accessible from the grub boot menu or can be booted to directly in the event of a drive failure.
Another great feature is the dual segment bypass interfaces. Four of the six gigabit Ethernet interfaces are bypass enabled and can be independently controlled. Currently the feature is limited to use in bridge mode installations where network up time is critical. Using our appliance in bridge mode allows you to "fail open" in the event of a kernel lockup or power outage. The appliance has tiny magnetic switches that physically bridge the external and internal interfaces together and basically turn the appliance into a network hub. Traffic from the edge router will continue to flow through the appliance to the network even if the appliance is powered off or if the Linux kernel has stopped responding. This is process is automatic and transparent and will require no additional configuration from the end user.
The NG series appliances include the following features:
- 6 Intel Pro1000 Gigabit Ethernet Interfaces
- Intel Dual Core, Core2Duo, and Core2Quad Processors
- DDR3-1066 Ram
- Integrated Backup/Restore Disaster Recovery System
- SATA II Hard Disks (SSD Available)
- Serial Console Port, 2 USB Ports
- Headless Design (Video is available)
- 16x2 LCD Display Module with Programmable Buttons
- Dual Bridge Mode Fail Over Segments
- 10GB Ethernet (Copper and Fiber) options Available
Fail-Over ClusteringAnnouncing: Bridge Mode Fail Over and ClusteringWe are pleased to announce that we have successfully tested and now fully support fail over clustering for bridge mode installations. With our new UT-NG Series appliances, we are able to create a bridge mode fail over cluster where by if the primary bridge fails for any reason, a secondary "hot standby" bridge will take over and continue to provide essential security functions to the LAN. The secondary "hot standby" appliance will service the network until the primary has come back online, at which point normal network operations will resume. The entire process is transparent and required minimal configuration to setup.
While most Untangle applications function normally, presently the Open-VPN module cannot be failed over to a "hot standby" appliance. Also, the spam module on the "hot standby" appliance cannot use a quarantine and may only be set to mark and pass spam traffic. Due to licensing limitations, only Untangle "Lite" may be loaded on the "hot standby" appliance. If you wish to have Untangle "Standard or Premium" loaded on the "hot standby" appliance, the purchase of an additional license is required. The following appliance models support bridge mode fail over and clustering:
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