SAN JOSE - Rainfinity last week unveiled updates to two products that they say will give customers an easy, cost-effective way to protect against network outages, not only within a data center, but also across remote locations.
The releases, RainWall 3.0 and RainConnect 3.0, are designed to be deployed in hours, requiring no network configuration changes. Each includes a Web-based management console that lets users monitor the products from any browser-enabled device.
RainWall, software that is deployed in conjunction with a firewall or VPN, provides high availability and load-balancing for firewalls and VPN gateways by intelligently routing traffic among clustered deployments. RainConnect, software that is deployed on a server running a firewall or its own dedicated server, protects the integrity of Internet connections, directing traffic to the most appropriate link among multiple ISPs.
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RainWall 3.0 lets businesses load-balance traffic among firewalls in one data center, and across remote locations. So if a branch office with no IT on-site experiences a failure, RainWall directs traffic to an operating firewall or VPN connection elsewhere in the network.
"IT receives a notification of the failure, but they don't have to rush out there and fix something. The other nodes will continue to pick up traffic and continue to give them access," says John Schroeder, vice president of marketing and business development at Rainfinity.
Companies can prioritize where RainWall should send failover traffic first, to a local connection, for example, before a remote location. Other new features in RainWall 3.0 include tighter integration with RainConnect and tighter integration with Check Point Software VPN and FireWall products. The Check Point integration lets users configure RainWall by extracting policies from Check Point gear. RainWall's status also can be viewed from the Check Point management console.
Bob Lowe, director of professional services at Tolt Technologies, a systems integrator for automated data collection in Gig Harbor, Wash., says he was looking for a way to make sure his company's five branch offices stayed connected.
"We wanted to make things redundant, and we were also looking to increase the speed without having to go to a full T-1," he says. Lowe estimates the company will save as much as $1,500 per month by going with RainConnect, which lets it use two DSL lines, rather than having to lease a T-1.
Rainfinity competes with companies such as StoneSoft on the software side, and firms such as F5 Networks and Radware on the hardware side.
Both products are available. RainWall starts at $13,500 for a two-node cluster on Check Point. RainConnect starts at $6,000.
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