SonicWALL E-Class NSA E8500 Appliance

SonicWALL E-Class NSA for Enterprise-class Deployments

Protection and Performance:

The SonicWALL® E-Class Network Security Appliance (NSA) Series is the industry’s first multi-core Unified Threat Management (UTM) solution, delivering enterprise-class Reassembly-Free Deep Packet Inspection™ without significantly impacting network throughput. Combining a powerful deep packet inspection firewall with multiple layers of protection technology and a suite of high availability features, the E-Class NSA E7500, E6500 and E5500 appliances offer a broad range of scalable solutions for enterprise deployments in distributed environments, campus networks and data centers.

SonicWALL E-Class NSAs are engineered to be the most scalable, reliable and highest performing multifunction threat appliances in their class. The E-Class NSA Series delivers powerful threat prevention against a vast spectrum of network attacks with unprecedented speed. This speed of protection is enabled through the NSA multi-core architecture, a parallel performance design for ultra-high-speed threat protection and deployment scalability. Taking protection to new levels of control is Application Intelligence Service, a set of customizable protection tools that empowers administrators with precise control over network traffic. Operational reliability is delivered through a high availability suite of features at the hardware and system level to optimize uptime and improve security coverage.

The NSA Series is a key part of SonicWALL’s portfolio of enterprise-class products and services for network security, email protection and secure remote access. All E-Class solutions offer outstanding protection and performance while delivering elegant simplicity and unparalleled value. SonicWALL’s E-Class delivers the high performance protection required by enterprise-class networks in a solution that is engineered to drive the cost and complexity out of running a secure network.

• Multi-core Performance Architecture
• Unified Threat Management Security Platform
• Deployment Flexibility
• Application Intelligence and Custom Control
• Dynamic Protection

Features & Benefits:

• Multi-core Performance Architecture. At the heart of the E-Class NSA is the SonicWALL multi-core performance architecture designed to provide breakthrough deep packet inspection and granular network intelligence over real-time network traffic without impacting network performance. The SonicWALL E-Class NSA can effectively deliver ultra-high-speed performance through the concurrent use of specialized security processing cores. Utilizing the processing power of multiple cores in unison dramatically increases throughput and simultaneous inspection capabilities while lowering overhead impact.
• Unified Threat Management Security Platform. The E-Class NSA Series delivers a highly redundant security and connectivity platform that is purpose-built for highspeed internal and external network protection, consolidating and extending security functionality throughout the network. E-Class NSAs integrate real-time gateway anti-virus, anti-spyware and intrusion prevention to secure networks and VPNs against an extensive array of dynamic threats including worms, Trojans, viruses, malware and software vulnerabilities
• Deployment Flexibility. Designed for highly redundant operations, E-Class NSA appliances are ideal solutions for wired or wireless applications requiring high-speed access and heavy workgroup segmentation. With integrated support for standards-based VoIP, virtual local area networks (VLANs), enterprise-class routing and quality of service (QoS), E-Class NSAs increase deployment flexibility and enhance productivity.
• Application Intelligence and Custom Control. Application Intelligence Service is a configurable set of granular application-specific policies that allow custom access control per network user, application, schedule or IP subnet level. These policies can restrict transfer of specific files and documents, scan email attachments using user-configurable criteria, automate bandwidth, control inspect internal and external Web access, and support custom signatures.
• Dynamic Protection. Dynamic threat protection, content filtering and application intelligence services are continually updated on a 24x7 basis to maximize security and decrease cost. IT productivity is increased by eliminating ad-hoc patch management for servers and workstations, automating the application of new protection signatures and removing the necessity to manually update security policies.

E-Class Network Security Appliance Architecture:

Comprehensive, Integrated Best-of-Breed Threat Protection:

Unified Threat Management Load Balancing Single processor designs that include multiple protection technologies are severely limited by a single centralized processor. SonicWALL UTM load balancing integrates a high-speed deep packet inspection and traffic classification engine onto multiple security cores inspecting applications, files and content-based traffic in real time without significantly impacting performance or scalability. This enables the scanning and control of threats for enterprise-class networks that carry bandwidth intensive and latency sensitive applications.

Unified Threat Management Engine:

The SonicWALL E-Class NSA UTM engine delivers the first scalable application layer inspection engine that can analyze files and content of any size in real time without reassembling packets or application content. This means of inspection is designed specifically for real-time applications and latency sensitive traffic, delivering complete control and inspection without having to proxy connections. Using this engine design, high-speed network traffic is inspected more efficiently and reliably for an improved end user experience.

Flexible, Customizable Deployment Options:

Central-site Gateway: Deployed as a Central-site Gateway the NSA Series provides a high-speed scalable platform, providing network segmentation and security using VLAN’s and security zones. Redundancy features include WAN Load balancing, ISP fail-over and stateful high availability.

Layer 2 Bridge: Mode Layer 2 bridge mode provides inline intrusion detection and prevention, adds an additional level of zone-based security to network segments or business units and simplifies layered security. Additionally, this enables administrators to limit access to sensitive data by specific business unit or database server.

Multi-layer Protection:

• Remote Site Protection: The E-Class NSA Series incorporates ultra-high performance Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) that easily scales to thousands of end points and branch offices. Innovative SonicWALL Clean VPN™ technology prevents vulnerabilities and malicious code by decontaminating traffic before it enters the corporate network, in real time and without user intervention.

• Gateway Protection: Easily integrated into existing environments, E-Class NSAs centralize gateway-level protection across all incoming and outgoing applications, files and content-based traffic, while controlling bandwidth and applications, without significantly impacting performance or scalability.
• Internal Protection: The highly-configurable E-Class NSA Series extends protection over the internal network by inspecting traffic over LAN interfaces and VLANs. Specifically designed for LAN network threats, the E-Class NSA Series monitors and responds to internally spreading malware, denial of service attacks, exploited software vulnerabilities, confidential documents, policy violations and network misuse.
• Desktop and Server Protection: In addition to network and gateway based protection, the E-Class NSA Series provides additional end point protection for workstations and servers through an enforced anti-virus and antispyware client with advanced heuristics. This enforced client solution delivers network access control by restricting Internet access on end points that do not have the latest signature or engine updates. When enforcement is enabled on the appliance, each end point is directed to download the enforced anti-virus and anti-spyware client without any administrator intervention, automating the deployment of end point security.
• Centralized Policy Management: The SonicWALL Global Management System (GMS) provides flexible, powerful and intuitive tools to centrally manage E-Class NSA configurations across distributed enterprises, view real-time monitoring metrics and integrate policy and compliance reporting.

Specifications:

^Notes:
1 Testing Methodologies: Maximum performance based on RFC 2544 (for firewall). Actual performance may vary depending on network conditions and activated services.
² UTM/Gateway AV/Anti-Spyware/IPS throughput measured using industry standard Spirent WebAvalanche HTTP performance test and Ixia test tools. Testing done with multiple flows through multiple port pairs.
³ Actual maximum connection counts are lower when UTM services are enabled.
⁴ VPN throughput measured using UDP traffic at 1280 byte packet size adhering to RFC 2544.
*Gateway AV/Anti-Spyware/IPS throughput measured using industry standard Spirent WebAvalanche HTTP Performance test.

Documentation:

 SonicWALL E-Class NSA Series Datasheet (.PDF)