Public ASG V7.1 BETA released

Test Astaro Security Gateway V7.1 Beta and win a Nintendo Wii

Astaro invites you to participate in the new Astaro Beta Test Program. The first Astaro Security Gateway V7.1 BETA release is now available; become a Beta Tester today for a chance to win one of six Nintendo Wii game consoles.

What’s new in ASG V7.1?

The completely re-designed HTTP proxy improves Web Filtering functionality & significantly increases performance. The new version also offers many usability enhancements as well as bug fixes. The new HTTP proxy provides the following major enhancements:

Whitelist/Blacklist per profile
Now you can block and allow dedicated URLs at the same time.

Active Directory native mode (NTLMv2/Kerberos)
Added support for NTLMv2/Kerberos authentication, which is required to authenticate against a Windows Domain Controller running in Native Mode.

Streaming media bypass
Ability to disable video and audio stream scanning in order to avoid delays caused by downloading and scanning the entire stream through the HTTP proxy prior to playing.

Intelligent caching (avoid multiple scanning of cached objects)
To further increase throughput of the HTTP Proxy, all cached content will be scanned only once. Re-scanning will only be done if the Virus scanner configuration has changed.

Block content before download
File extension scanning is now done before the download of the content is started.

No restart on configuration changes
The new proxy now reloads its configuration without terminating existing connections

Full support for HTTP 1.1 connection keepalive
The new proxy fully supports HTTP 1.1 keepalive on client and server connections, improving network performance.

Profile/Filteraction logging
To help troubleshooting wrong profile/filter assignment matching, the used profile and filter action is now logged in the http logfile.

HTTP Proxy scans POST request bodies
The proxy now does virus scanning for bodies sent with POST requests to foreign servers as well

Improved performance
The new proxy uses an IO model that allows for increased network performance of up to 80% depending on hardware and content scanning configuration.

Besides HTTP proxy enhancements the new release also includes the following new features:

• SPAM Scanner with X-SPAM Flag
• Network Accounting/Usage
• Automatically Delete HTTP Proxy Usage Reports
• Contentfilter double byte support
• HTTP-/SMTP-/FTP-/POP3-/IPS-Exceptions ON/OFF switches in WebAdmin
• Cluster/HA MAC-Address takeover
• Multiple-IP-Check Uplink Failover
• DynDNS-for-Static-Ethernet
• Packet filter based on interface
• Nat Traversal ON/OFF
• switch in WebAdmin
• Auto-Packetfilter Checkbox for DNAT/SNAT
• Additional addresses (aka alias) on network interfaces ON/OFF
• switch in WebAdmin
• utomatic user creation support for eDir SSO

How to become a Beta Tester

Bullet proof internet security is mission critical to all our customers. A comprehensive testing procedure is required to achieve the right level of perfection for Astaro products in a productive environment. Therefore we would like to invite you to participate in our Beta Test Program. The following sections will provide all the information you need to download, install and test the ASG V7.1 Beta.

Testing Period

November 9th – November 23rd

Download

You can either do a new installation by downloading and installing the complete ISO image or you can upgrade your existing installation with the BETA up2date package.

New installation:

Download asg-7.075-071108-3.iso
Size:468 MB (468,187,136 Byte)
md5sum: d6ebea275c888edebdf0ee4eb5c1dd65

Search for "how to burn" on our Knowledge Base (http://www.astaro.com/kb/) if you have trouble to burn a CD from the ISO image. The ASG V7.1 BETA includes a test license with unlimited users and all features activated. There is no need to request a new or special license.  

Upgrade:

Download u2d-sys-7.075.tgz.gpg
size: 103 MB (103,628,560 Byte)
md5sum: d152ae3304a958667e3f1650a72a0eda

• As the first Beta Up2Date package will not be fetched via the automatic Up2Date mechanism you need to download and install the Up2Date package manually
• Download the Up2Date package from our HTTP or FTP Server and install it in WebAdmin under Management >> Up2Date >> Advanced (please note: you need a running 7.011 to install 7.075)
• Further Beta Up2Date packages, which will be released during the test period will be automatically fetched as usually
• At the end of the beta phase we will offer a migration path for all BETA installations to install 7.100 GA and keep config and log files

Download servers:

• Astaro FTP server: ftp://ftp.astaro.de/pub/ASL/v7.0/BETA/
• Astaro HTTP server: http://download.astaro.de/ASL/v7.0/BETA/
• BitTorrent: http://download.astaro.de/ASL/v7.0/BETA/
  (If you are not familiar with BitTorrent, please check out this detailed description: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bittorrent).

Installation and Hardware Requirements

• The software needs to be installed on a dedicated Intel compatible PC.
• Astaro minimum recommendation for V7.1 BETA installations: Intel Pentium III 900 MHz, 512MB RAM, 10 GB hard disk drive and above.
• Best performance results running on: Dual Xeon or Athlon, 2GB RAM, 36 GB SCSI 15krpm hard disk drive and above.
• For proved hardware components please check our Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) at: http://www.astaro.com/lists/HCL-ASG-V7.txt

Supported Web Browsers

The Astaro Security Gateway V7 graphical user interface (WebAdmin) will support 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 1.5 or higher
• Safari 3.0 or higher

Linux:

• Mozilla Firefox 1.5 or higher

Mac OSX:

• Safari 2.0.3 or higher
• Mozilla Firefox 1.5 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. We recommend using Firefox on a system with at least 512 MB RAM and a CPU with 1.5 GHz or more to achieve maximum performance

Limitations and Hints

• With the provided ISO image there maybe some limitations (remember: it’s a BETA :-)
• Please check the Known Issue List on our User Bulletin Board before you test ASG V7.1 BETA.
• ASG V7.1 BETA will not be supported via Astaro’s support teams therefore you should not use it within productive environments.
• An ASG V7.1 manual and complete Online Help will be available with the GA release.  
• The ASG V7.1 BETA version is compatible with the latest version of Astaro Command Center (ACC), including deployments with HA and Clustering scenarios.  

Test Cases

After you have successfully installed the beta version of ASG V7.1 you are able to conduct individual tests at your own discretion. If feasible we would also appreciate if you would have a closer look into the following areas and provide us with your personal feedback as described below:

• HTTP proxy performance
• Correct display and functionality of HTML pages
• Playing video and audio streams with activated streaming bypass
• WebAdmin performance

Feedback

Provide your feedback through the following two channels:

1. As with earlier versions please post any feedback and discuss any of the ASG V7.1 BETA features on our User Bulletin Board in the "BETA Version" forum. But be aware: Finding bugs in ASG V7.1 Beta will be harder then ever as the Astaro R&D team has already put tremendous effort in testing all the new features.
2. Additionally we are offering a direct feedback channel for both, experienced and occasional users through a short online questionnaire asking for your specific test experience and observations with the major new features. Use this tool if you want to share your overall satisfaction with the new release.

Win a Nintendo Wii !

Your feedback is important. It supports our effort to meet the highest quality demands. As a result, all participants in our Beta Program for ASG V7.1 will have the chance to win one of six new gaming consoles from Nintendo! And this is how it works: Beta Testers using the Astaro User Bulletin Board to provide their feedback are invited to participate in the Astaro Beta Challenge:
Each of the three testers who are reporting the highest amount of confirmed bugs will be honoured with a Nintendo Wii. For more information please see this dedicated posting on our User Bulletin Board. Beta Testers who complete the ASG V7.1 questionnaire are automatically included in the ASG V7.1 Prize Draw. Astaro will raffle three additional Nintendo Wii consoles among participants who complete our short survey. The questionnaire will be available on November 9th via http://www.astaro.com/V7.1survey Shortly after the Beta phase has finished Astaro will evaluate the feedback of all beta program participants and will inform you about your possible win of a Nintendo Wii. Please note that you can’t win more than one of the six Nintendo’s consoles that are available in this program.

Good luck!
Your Astaro Product Management Team