CacheGuard-OS (Operating System)
About CacheGuard-OS
CacheGuard-OS is a Linux based Operating System built from scratch and especially designed to Secure and Optimize the network traffic. Once installed on a machine, CacheGuard-OS transforms that machine into a powerful and easy to handle UTM (Unified Threat Management) & QoS (Quality of Service) appliance.
Great care has been taken by CacheGuard-OS developers to select the best technologies to integrate into CacheGuard-OS to get a robust and trustworthy UTM & QoS solution. CacheGuard-OS integrates technologies such as firewall, VPN IPsec, web proxy and reverse proxy, web gateway antivirus, URL filtering, SSL inspection, SSL offloading, access logging, bandwidth shaping, web caching, HTTP compression, WAF (Web Application Firewall) and web application load balancing. Explore all CacheGuard solutions at:
What makes CacheGuard-OS an innovative solution is that with CacheGuard-OS all those integrated technologies consistently work together as a whole and form a functional and easy to handle UTM & QoS appliance. This is much different than having various separated technologies installed on a Linux box and have to deal with complex configurations to make them work together. To offer that consistency about 100 000 lines of code have been written to develop CacheGuard-OS. With CacheGuard UTM & QoS appliance the complexity is not visible and remains under the hood. All you have to do is to turn on the key and enjoy.
Machine Requirements
CacheGuard-OS is distributed in both x86 (32 bits) and x64 (64 bits) CPU compatible versions and can run on almost all x86/x64 machines made by well-known manufacturers such as HP, Dell and IBM and hypervisors such as VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V. The machine resource requirements mainly depend on the number of users to support and the CacheGuard Functions to you need to activate.
Depending on the number of users to support and available machine resources, CacheGuard-OS is tuned during the installation to run as effective as possible. To do so, CacheGuard-OS assumes that all forwarding users are not simultaneously active but only 20% of them. By simultaneous or active users we mean users that generate traffic contrary to concurrent users who can be connected but not active. The total number of forwarding users and the number of simultaneous reverse users to support are the most important inputs that should be specified during the installation.
For 100 forwarding users (20 simultaneous users) and/or 20 simultaneous reverse users, a typical hardware configuration could be:
- CPU: 4 cores
- RAM: 4 GB
- HDD: 200 GB
- NIC: 2 x Ethernet
For more users, choose a machine with more RAM, CPU Cores and HDD Storage Capacity. As a rule of thumb, add 1 GB of RAM and 1 CPU core for every additional 50 forwarding users and/or 10 simultaneous reverse users. You can also add 75 GB of HDD Storage Capacity for every additional 50 forwarding users. Regarding the choice of the storage device, please note that CacheGuard-OS runs better with several low storage capacity HDD configured as a RAID compared to a single high storage capacity HDD. CacheGuard-OS innately supports software RAID 0, 1, 5, 6 and 10 by using 3% of the CPU resources only.
Note that it is possible to install CacheGuard-OS on a mini computer configured for 5 users and implemented as a firewall and/or forwarding proxy only. The minimum hardware configuration for 5 users is as follows:
- x86/x64 Architecture
- CPU Intel Pentium IV
- 256 MB RAM(*)
- 12 GB HDDf
- 1 x Ethernet 100 Mbps NIC
- 1 USB port + USB/Ethernet Adapter
(*) With 256 MB of RAM, CacheGuard-OS can be implemented as a firewall and/or forwarding proxy only. If you need to activate all functions, on a x86 based machine a minimum of 2 GB is required. (**) With a 12 GB HDD, CacheGuard-OS can be installed without the persistent caching and logging. If you need to activate the persistent caching and logging a HDD of at least 16 GB is required.
CacheGuard-OS Licensing
CacheGuard-OS is the result of the mere aggregation of various Open Source software (as OSI definition) and Open Source software developed by CacheGuard Technologies Ltd. All software developed by CacheGuard Technologies Ltd are subject to the GNU General Public License v3 while the mere aggregation of software developed by CacheGuard Technologies Ltd and third parties software forming CacheGuard-OS is licensed under the CacheGuard License Agreement. A CacheGuard UTM & QoS appliance is also licensed under the CacheGuard License Agreement.
Open Source software note
At Technologies Ltd we consider that Open Source software are more reliable and more trustworthy than opaque source software. This does not mean that there are no vulnerabilities at all in Open Source software but with Open Source software you get the warranty that vulnerabilities can be disclosed and resolved more easily and more promptly (by millions of Open Source developers around the globe who have an open access to source codes). The OpenSSL heartbleed vulnerability that has been disclosed and resolved in March 2012 is just an example. That’s why we distribute CacheGuard-OS as an Open Source software.
CacheGuard UTM & QoS Technical Functions
CacheGuard-OS Network Optimization
| CacheGuard-OS IP security
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CacheGuard-OS Web Security
| CacheGuard-OS High Availability
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CacheGuard-OS Web Optimization
| CacheGuard-OS Administration
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