I have an ESXi Server 5.5 with vCenter 5.5.
NSX is to complicated at this point to install for what I am looking at.
I was looking for a virtual appliance or firewall to install and do some intrusion / pen testing with multiple types of VMs .
Are there any appliance out on the market that would be a good fit ?
thanks
Hi, majority of firewall vendors provide virtual appliance version their product, I would suggest looking at vendor your comfortable with and see if they provide virtual firewall appliance. Although through of the virtual appliance will be a bit slow in general, it really depends on your requirements.
Here are couple example: Fortinet | Virtual Appliances Firewall Security and PaloAlto VM Series - Virtualized Firewalls and CheckPoint Virtual Edition | Check Point Software
Hello,
If you own vCNS then use the build in vCNS Edge, it does work quite well. If you do not already have vCNS then you need to get it quickly by upgrading to vCloud Suite (it comes only with vCloud Suite 5.x now). However, be aware that vCNS was EOL'd but will work with 5.x and 6.0. There is still a few years of run time on this.
However, if you have existing physical firewalls you may want to just extend their functionality into the virtual network with a virtualized version of that firewall. Several exist:
Juniper SRX -> Juniper vSRX
Forinet -> Fortinet Virtual Appliance Firewall
Palo Alto -> VM Series
Checkpoint -> Checkpoint VE
Cisco ASA -> Cisco vASA
Barracuda -> Barracuda VM
etc.
or you can use something like the following which use the firewalls built into every VM and allow networks to cross cloud boundaries with a single layer of control
Illumio
CloudPassage
or you can use a free version (depending on size of environment)
IP Cop
Smoothwall
Shorewall
etc.
Best regards,
Edward L. Haletky
VMware Communities User Moderator, VMware vExpert 2009-2015
Author of the books 'VMWare ESX and ESXi in the Enterprise: Planning Deployment Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2011 Pearson Education. 'VMware vSphere and Virtual Infrastructure Security: Securing the Virtual Environment', Copyright 2009 Pearson Education.
Virtualization and Cloud Security Analyst: The Virtualization Practice, LLC -- vSphere Upgrade Saga -- Virtualization Security Round Table Podcast