Check Point ClusterXL

Check Point ClusterXL Overview:

ClusterXL® provides high availability and load sharing to keep businesses running by distributing traffic among clusters of redundant gateways so that the computing capacity of multiple machines may be combined to increase total throughput.

High availability and load sharing are vital requirements for any businesscritical firewall or VPN deployment. However, setup and administration can be a complex, time-consuming task. Additional hardware deployment, software configuration, and monitoring can combine to significantly increase the total cost of ownership.

ClusterXL® is a software-based high availability and load sharing solution for Check Point gateways. It enables the distribution of traffic among multiple, redundant gateways so that computing capacity may be combined to increase total throughput. In the event that an individual gateway becomes unreachable, all connections are redirected without interruption to a backup. Tight integration with Check Point management and enforcement points ensures that ClusterXL deployment is simple.

Features & Benefits:

Product Features

• Transparent failover of all connections
• Software-based load sharing
• Tight integration with Check Point gateways

• Provides resilient security
• Does not require additional hardware
• Simplifies deployment and administration

Resilient security
ClusterXL maintains resilient security for all connections during failover, including VPN connections. If a primary gateway becomes unavailable, all sessions continue securely without interruption. Users will have to neither reconnect and reauthenticate nor notice that an alternate gateway has taken over.

Load sharing
With load sharing, ClusterXL can expand the performance capability of VPNs by distributing traffic between multiple gateways. Up to five gateways may be added to a cluster.

ClusterXL provides seamless failover and load sharing for mission-critical Check Point gateway deployments.

Integrated management
ClusterXL setup parameters are configured directly from the Check Point SmartDashboard™. If a failover occurs, the event is logged, and an alert can be automatically sent to an administrator via email, SNMP, text message, and more. The status of all gateway clusters can be viewed in real-time using Check Point SmartView Status™. The result is a powerful, integrated management solution that is simple to deploy and requires minimal ongoing overhead.

Auto recovery and hot swap
Gateways may be added to or removed from a functioning cluster without reconfiguring or restarting the cluster. For example, if a failure occurs because of an operating system problem, the failed machine could automatically restart (if the operating system has been configured for automatic reboot) and reenter the cluster without administrator intervention. This enables maintenance of cluster machines during normal business hours with no service disruption.

Health Check
ClusterXL incorporates a programmable Health Check that continuously monitors gateway processes. It enables a proactive response to a range of problems that may not represent catastrophic failures, but can affect overall system performance and reliability.

In addition to detecting VPN-1®/FireWall-1® failures, Health Check can determine system condition by communicating with third-party applications. For example, a disk space agent may notify Health Check if the amount of available disk space reaches a predefined minimum. The system can then respond by forcing a failover to a backup gateway.

Deployment and ongoing administration of ClusterXL is simplified through tight integration with Check Point Smart Management Architecture.

Specifications:

VPN-1 gateways:

Check Point SecurePlatform™, Nokia IPSO 4.1-4.2, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0 Kernel 2.4.21, Solaris 8/9/10, Windows Server 2003 (SP1-2), Windows 2000 Advanced Server (SP1-4), Windows 2000 Server (SP 1-4)

Documentation:

Download the Check Point ClusterXL Datasheet (PDF).