SonicWall is putting its Global Management System software onto an appliance to make the platform easier to deploy.
Called EM 5000, the appliance contains GMS 5.1 software, which has all the features of the latest GMS version plus software necessary to deploy it on the appliance, the company says.
The company says it plans eventually to sell additional software for the device to expand its functionality, such as two-factor authentication or NAC.
GMS has traditionally been deployed on Windows servers, but the appliance takes away the need for customers to have to provide the hardware and load the software, SonicWall says. GSM is designed for businesses to manage multiple SonicWall security appliances that range from firewall/VPN gear to unified threat management boxes to backup and recovery appliances.
The EM 5000 hardware is based on SonicWall's CDP 5040 backup and recovery appliance with more memory and four hard drives that provide 2.25TB of storage in a RAID 5 array. This gives it enough horsepower for future software functionality, the company says.
EM 5000 is available at the end of February and pricing starts at US$6,995 for the device and licenses to manage 10 SonicWall appliances.
