Unlike management consoles from other hardware vendors, GMS offers multi-device management at a superior level of granularity for a wider range of devices and includes many more features developed specifically for service providers.
The upcoming GMS 6.0 is a major release filled to the brim with new features and functionality. GMS 6.0 is tentatively scheduled for general availability for GMS customers by the end of 2009. GMS 6.0 will be available both for general-purpose Windows servers and the SonicWALL Universal Management Appliance (UMA) EM5000 appliance.
GMS 6.0 focuses on expanding the applicability or footprint of GMS, further enablement of MSP service providers, and enhanced productivity and expense management with the following new features.
Expand the footprint of GMS
- Extended management of SonicWALL CDP and Email Security devices
- Application Firewall Reporting
- SonicOS 5.5 Support
- Custom Reports for SSL VPN appliances
- SQL Server 2008 support
- Multiple Authentication Servers Support
- RADIUS Authentication Support for GMS login
MSP Enablement
- Web Services Application Programming Interface (API)
- Enhanced CLI Support
- Live monitoring using event correlation technologies
Productivity and Expense Management
Details on the above and other features planned for GMS 6.0 are provided below. Note that more features may be included in the final release of GMS 6.0 beyond those listed here.
Extended Management of CDP and Email Security Appliances
With GMS 6.0, GMS administrators can define and push policies for Continuous Data Protection (CDP), Email Security, and Network Security appliances at the device, device group, or global level. Expanding granular management coverage to the CDP and Email Security product lines greatly enlarges the applicability of GMS. Detailed policy configuration control at the unit and group level significantly increases the productivity of the GMS administrator. GMS administrators can also manage SonicWALL SSL VPN appliances at the device level. Enterprise customers can now manage their entire SonicWALL infrastructure centrally from GMS. MSP customers can offer not only firewall services but also a complete backup and recovery, email security, and secure remote access service solution to their customers using GMS.
Application Firewall Reporting
Application Firewall Reporting will provide visibility into the impact and effectiveness of application firewall policies and thus increase employee productivity and efficiency of network usage. This feature introduces detailed reporting on the application firewall feature of fifth generation Network Security/UTM firewall appliances. Reports include but are not limited to top categories, top applications, top users, and top policies. Users can drill down within reports.
SonicOS 5.5 Support
This feature brings GMS support for the network security product line to the recently released SonicOS 5.5. New features now manageable by GMS include SonicPoint N support, SSL VPN NetExtender, UTM anti-spam and active/active failover. SonicOS 5.5 support renders GMS applicable to a wider range of UTM appliance features and makes the GMS administrator more productive.
Custom Reports for SSL VPN Appliances
This feature allows the GMS administrator to create custom reports using the raw logs collected from SonicWALL Aventail Secure Remote Access (SRA) and SSL VPN for SMB appliances under management. GMS customers can now create granular reports on who accessed what applications over what SSL VPN connection and at what time for forensic analysis and troubleshooting. Using data from these reports can help increase employee productivity and network uptime.
SQL Server 2008 Support
GMS now supports the latest major release of SQL Server rendering GMS applicable to a broader range of customer environments.
Multiple Authentication Server Support
The GMS administrator can define multiple authentication servers per GMS Domain. Many customers use multiple authentication domains within their network. This feature allows GMS to be used within a broader range of customer environments.
RADIUS Authentication Support for Login into GMS
Many customers use RADIUS as part of their authentication infrastructure. RADIUS authentication support of the login module for GMS allows GMS to be used within a broader range of customer environments. It is also part of the upcoming PCI 1.2 requirements.
Web Services API
GMS administrators typically use several other consoles to manage their network or, in the case of an MSP, their customers' networks. The Web Services Application Programming Interface (API) facilitates integration between GMS and other management consoles and greatly increases the productivity of the internal IT staff.
The Web Services API is a new Web Services infrastructure to facilitate GMS integration with both in-house built and third party applications, communication between GMS agents, and uploading data from SonicWALL devices under management.
Enhanced CLI Support
Enhanced Command Line Interface (CLI) Support enhances the productivity of the internal IT staff of enterprise and service provider customers. The new CLI does not require a user to do an OS level login into the GMS server. With this feature, users are able to send commands to GMS from a remote host in a secure manner. This feature enables the automation of the interaction between GMS and other systems used by the customer. It facilitates execution of commands on the GMS CLI if the user cannot access the GMS Console host using Remote Desktop. In addition, a third party application can interact with the GMS CLI from a remote host using the GMS CLI Client and Server. Thirdly, a user can automate tasks on the GMS CLI from a remote host by using the GMS CLI Client application in batch/shell scripts.
Live Monitoring using Event Correlation Technologies
This is a new feature, enabling live monitoring and alerting of any syslog type events originating from a SonicWALL device under management. Near real-time live monitoring and alerting based on syslog messages from SonicWALL devices under management increases network uptime.
Enhanced Summarizer Capacity Planning
Enhanced performance assessment facilitates finding the root cause of peak hardware usage and proper capacity expansion planning and therefore allows the GMS administrator to time his new hardware purchases and associated expenses appropriately, as he grows his business and brings more devices under management.
GMS 6.0 includes enhanced tools to assess hardware utilization for collection of syslog data and summarization for reporting. This feature also includes an estimation tool to determine total capacity of the hardware in use. The impact of a variety of parameters such as number of users and types of reports enabled is taken into consideration both at the global level and for each device under management.
Reverse Inheritance
Reverse Inheritance saves GMS administrators a considerable amount of time by taking one well-configured firewall and promoting its policy configuration to the group level. From the group level, the configurations can then be pushed down to other devices.
Reverse Inheritance is the ability to inherit policy settings from a unit up to the parent nodes. GMS 5.1 only allowed for forward inheritance, i.e. policies could only be pushed from the group level down to the device level. With GMS 6.0, reverse Inheritance allows for policies to be inherited from a specific device to the group level. Effectively, Reverse Inheritance enables the user to copy existing configurations and to create predefined SonicWALL configurations.
Inheritance Support for Reporting Screens
GMS 6.0 includes inheritance support for setting configurations for GMS reports. This allows a new unit to be added to a group, which then can inherit the GMS report settings for that group ultimately increasing the GMS administrator's productivity.
