SOLIDserver 7.0: Bringing Enhancements for Simplifying and Securing Your Network

With the new release of SOLIDserver 7.0, EfficientIP continues to prove its pivotal role for networks in the areas of IP resource management, automation and security. This new release comes with exciting new features such as a brand new user interface designed to improve user experience. Powerful enhancements of our DNS Guardian highlight, more than ever, the key role of the DNS in the global network security ecosystem. DDI has not been left out either, with important evolutions to support growing automation needs in digital transformation projects and multi-cloud environments. In addition, reporting has become even more interactive, bringing network managers unprecedented visibility over DNS traffic.

Network security enhancements: Authoritative, Transparent Proxy and DNSSEC

DNS Guardian already offers adaptive security mechanisms to the network, leveraging the DNS. Version 7.0 brings major improvements with support for authoritative deployment, authoritative traffic insight and transparent proxy functionality. Supporting DNS Guardian on “private network” authoritative servers offers valuable optimization of network design. As an example, in the case of a remote site for which it is economically not viable to have one dedicated server for authoritative services and another one for recursive services.

Release 7.0 also introduces domain filtering options that go beyond RPZ capabilities, to handle situations where DNS requests addressed to specific Internet servers need to be intercepted to provide additional services such as filtering or accounting. DNS Guardian can be configured to act as a DNS transparent proxy, meaning any DNS request arriving at the DNS Guardian will be analyzed with standard security features before being forwarded. Combining this with existing threat detection algorithms gives DNS Guardian the ability to dynamically update a local feed of domains for permanently filtering any contextually-identified threats.

The importance of DNS is being more and more recognized as vital for ensuring global network security. However, DNSSEC – despite industry agreement that it provides valuable security enhancement to DNS – remains poorly deployed. So in order to simplify and accelerate DNSSEC deployment, this new version introduces 1-click DNSSEC keys management.

Network management innovations: DHCP failover, IPv6 prefix delegation and VXLAN

DHCP failover has been introduced with Windows Server® 2012, providing another way to ensure continuous availability of DHCP service in Microsoft environments. When using DHCP failover, DHCP scopes and leases information is shared by two DHCP servers. So if one server fails and becomes unavailable, DHCP leases can be provided to DHCP clients by the other. Having already implemented this functionality for the ISC DHCP, EfficientIP now includes equivalent support for MS DHCP.

IPv6 has introduced new addressing mechanisms which require that DHCP allows dynamic delegation of prefixes to access routers. EfficientIP has added this capability, bringing new possibilities to those network service providers who have to manage complex DHCP configurations.

The networks themselves are rapidly changing with the uptake of SDN and NFV technologies. IP fabrics are gaining in popularity and VXLAN(s) are now heavily leveraged to deploy overlay networks. Our VLAN Manager introduces support for VXLAN management, bringing extra visibility over the network layers to simplify troubleshooting.

Network automation: Improved resource management efficiency and security

As part of our ongoing strive towards simplification of life-cycle management of IP resources and holistic network security, EfficientIP continues to partner with leading ITSMs and networking solutions including ServiceNow, Cisco DNA and Tufin. Thanks to our powerful API suite and plugins, integration is fast and easy, bringing tremendous operational benefits including huge time savings, error-free configurations and faster rollout of services and security policies.

See what is inside version 7.1 of SOLIDserver