Great wall of Linux on tap from Symantec, IBM

Symantec last week announced the release of its Enterprise Firewall for IBM’s eServer iSeries 270 running Linux. Formerly known as the AS/400 server family, IBM has been offering Linux as an option on its RISC-based iSeries hardware platform for several years.

The release of Symantec Enterprise Firewall for Linux in the iSeries could give businesses a powerful platform for deploying security at the edge of an enterprise network. The firewall product includes a hardened Linux operating system at the core, and can be deployed across multiple logical partitions (LPAR) on an IBM iSeries, allowing the box to function as a consolidated group of virtual security appliances handling certain tasks.

Symantec says the platform is capable of handling several firewall and edge security tasks on each LPAR instance, including full application inspection and application-layer proxies, as well as stateful packet inspection and packet filtering.

Symantec’s Linux-based firewall can be deployed on a standalone iSeries for protecting a network, or on separate LPARs of a production iSeries server, allowing a business to consolidate firewalls and enterprise servers into a single box, according to Symantec and IBM. 

The security software company plans to expand its enterprise firewall offerings to other Linux-based iSeries server models over the next year. The Symantec Enterprise Firewall for Linux on the iSeries 270 is available now.