SteelConnect Virtual Gateway Overview
SteelConnect gateways enable you to connect branch, data center, private cloud, and public cloud networks together to form a unified, software-defined hybrid WAN (SD-WAN). Gateways also provide:
• basic network services to zones (subnets).
• policy enforcement.
• extended reporting.
• automated VPN with state-of-the-art security.
SteelConnect virtual gateways are compatible with many industry-standard hypervisor and cloud platforms: VMware ESXi, Linux KVM, Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix Xen, Oracle Virtual Box, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Azure.
Generally, the process for deploying a virtual gateway onto a virtual machine involves these steps:
1. Use SteelConnect Manager (SCM) to define basic parameters, such as sites the gateway will connect and, in rare cases, any special configurations needed for AutoVPN, HA, DHCP, or additional uplinks.
2. Use SCM to build and download the gateway image file based on your specified parameters.
3. Use your hypervisor platform’s console to upload and install the image onto a virtual machine.
4. Use SCM to verify your gateway is running and connected.
Virtual gateway specifications
This table lists available virtual gateway specifications.
Model | Hardware | Interfaces |
VGW-LIC-BW010 100 Mbps VPN | 1 CPU @ 2.1 GHz 1 GB DRAM 200 MB storage | 3 x 1 GbE or 1 x 10 GbE WAN ports 8 x LAN ports |
VGW-LIC-BW200 | 4 CPUs @ 3.0 GHz or 6 CPUs @ 2.1 GHz 8 GB DRAM 2 GB storage | 3 x 1 GbE or 1 x 10 GbE WAN ports 8 x LAN ports |
Before you begin
Because the purpose of a gateway is to bridge multiple networks together, you should have already established networks and network resources prior to deploying your virtual gateways. This document assumes that you have these resources up and running or, at a minimum, preconfigured and ready to deploy:
• Access to a SteelConnect Manager console. You must have a realm and organization configured as well as the sites, with accompanying zones, that you want to connect with gateways.
• Virtual machine instances running a supported virtualization platform to host your gateways.
• Virtual network adapters configured on the virtual machine host that will enable the gateway to access the internet so that it can communicate with SCM and other gateways, and that will enable resources in the gateway’s network to communicate with it.
• Security configuratons that allow the gateway to perform routing service and that provide the gateway access to all required ports.