Meet the latest step in the evolution of Cisco Adaptive Security Appliances™— the Cisco Adaptive Security Virtual Appliance™. This appliance brings the power of Cisco ASA™ to the virtual domain and private cloud environments. It runs the same software as the physical appliance to deliver proven security functionality. You can use it to protect virtual workloads within your data center. Later, you can expand, contract, or shift the location of these workloads over time and span physical, virtual, and public cloud infrastructures. In the past, computing infrastructure elements were implemented with specialized hardware built for that purpose. With the advent of x86 server virtualization and the need for more power, the virtualization of computing infrastructure is becoming more popular. Businesses are deploying their computing, storage, and network infrastructure with virtual devices because of benefits they gain. These include deployment flexibility, increased server utilization, and ease of management. The Cisco Adaptive Security Virtual Appliance™ runs as a virtual machine inside a hypervisor in a virtual host. Most of the features that are supported on a physical ASA by Cisco™ software are supported on the virtual appliance as well, except for clustering and multiple contexts.

Take a holistic, system based approach to data center security with Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure Security™ solutions. These solutions provide a common policy based operational model across Cisco ACI™ ready networks. As a result, you can reduce cost and complexity without compromising data center functionality. Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure Security™ solutions can be managed as a pool of resources, allowing administrators to intelligently stitch them to applications and transactions using the Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller™ (APIC). Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure Security™ solutions scale on demand, has programmable automation, and provides transparent policy based security for both physical and virtual environments. Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure Security™ solutions allow organizations to take full advantage of the power, flexibility, and performance of their new Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure™ data center environments without compromising functionality or security. For organizations implementing Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure™ fabric architecture, the updated Cisco ASA 5585—X™ and Cisco Adaptive Security Virtual Appliance™ solutions can be fully integrated into the Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure™ fabric.

Fully Integrated Cisco ACI Security

The appliance has been fully and transparently integrated into the fabric of the next—generation Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure™ data center architecture. For those deployments, the Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller™ provides a single point of control for both network and security management. It can provision the appliance’s security as a service, manage policy, and monitor the entire network and security environment for a unified view. This approach removes the limitations of traditional network—oriented security solutions, allowing for significantly streamlined provisioning. These resources can be selected and attached to specific applications or transactions to provide dynamic, scalable, policy based security. The Cisco Adaptive Security Virtual Appliance™ is a virtualized network security solution based on the market leading Cisco ASA 5500—X™ Series firewalls. It supports both traditional and next generation software defined network (SDN) and Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure™ (ACI™) environments to provide policy enforcement and threat inspection across heterogeneous multi site environments. The features on a physical ASA by Cisco™ software removes the limitations of traditional network oriented security solutions in dynamic data center environments.

Cisco ACI And Citrix Netscaler

Your business runs on applications. But the demands placed on your data center make managing them more and more difficult. Without a simple solution to automate management, scaling, and delivery, you’re sinking fast. Combine comprehensive Cisco SDN™ architecture with Citrix™ industry—leading application delivery control and load balancing in a single solution that gives you total control and unprecedented agility. Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure™ (ACI) integrates Citrix NetScaler™ application delivery controller (ADC) appliances to reduce deployment complexity and better align applications with dynamic business requirements in existing and next—generation data centers. With Cisco ACI™, applications guide networking behavior, not the other way around. This approach redefines the power of IT, making IT more responsive to changing business and application needs, enhancing agility, and adding business value. Cisco™ and Citrix™ share a common vision for network simplification and rapid network service provisioning. Both companies support an application-centric approach that helps address critical customer challenges in both traditional and next—generation data centers.

Management Options

The virtual appliance, along with the physical Cisco ASA 5500—X™, next generation firewalls can be managed by security administrators as a pool of resources that scale on demand. It provides programmable automation for deployment and management and uses a common policy based operational model across physical and virtual environments, reducing cost and complexity. Representational State Transfer (REST) application programming interface (API); This API simplifies device management; integrating the virtual appliance with custom policy orchestration systems used in SDN environments. Cisco Adaptive Security Device Manager™—this no cost GUI based single device management option can be used for configuring, monitoring, and troubleshooting the virtual and physical appliances. Cisco Security Manager™—you can use this solution for comprehensive multi device deployment and management of both the virtual appliance and the physical Cisco ASA 5500—X™ appliances. You gain a consolidated view of the entire firewall and VPN policy across the network. Command line interface—a flexible command based management interface uses scripting for quick provisioning and automation of the appliances.

Features And Benefits

Purpose built for data center security. The Cisco Adaptive Security Virtual Appliance™ brings full Cisco ASA firewall and VPN capabilities to virtualized environments to help safeguard traffic and multi tenant architectures. Optimized for data center deployments, it’s designed to work in multiple hypervisor environments, reduce administrative overhead, and increase operational efficiency. Virtual switch independent, it may be deployed in Cisco™, hybrid, and non—Cisco™ based data centers. VMware™, KVM™, Microsoft Hyper—V™, Amazon Web Services™, and other cloud platforms offer flexibility and choice. Predetermined configurations accelerate and simplify security service provisioning to match the speed of application deployment. These configurations provide the appliance with critical security functions that dynamically scale to protect assets as business demands change. In the Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure™ topology—independent environment, Cisco ASAv™ services are managed as a pool of security resources. The Cisco Adaptive Security Virtual Appliance™ supports site to site VPN, remote access VPN, and clientless VPN functionalities as supported by physical Cisco ASA™ devices.