Stratus announces an expansion of its portfolio ztC Edge with the introduction of a new software release, Stratus Redundant Linux 2.0, and a new hardware model, the ztC Edge 110i.
Customers can already download the updated software and order the new ztC Edge computers which offer significantly greater security, interoperability and resiliency.
The complete set of features available today includes:
✓ Host-based firewall: Allows each ztC Edge system to block (blacklist) or allow (whitelist) particular IP addresses, domain names, protocols or ports, using customizable IP tables. Default settings, user guides, and specific videos for Operational Technologies (OT) personnel make the firewall simple and easy to configure and manage, and complement network-based firewall solutions.
✓ Limited USB ports: They are locked in the ztC Edge system by default, until changed by an administrator. Hackers have been known to use USB ports to gain control of computer systems and spread malware. Preventing unauthorized access through your system's USB ports helps reduce the risk of intrusion or attack.
✓ Improved authentication: Restrict system access to authorized users and groups. 80% of all security breaches start with password breaches. Stronger authentication with more robust password management (e.g. weak ones not allowed, obligation to change default values) and idle session automatic logout, as well as active directory integration help ztC Edge customers to simplify access security and risk reduction.
✓ More secure communication protocols: Helps ensure data security between ztC Edge nodes and between ztC Edge and Stratus systems. Two-way encryption of communications using the latest versions of SSL and TLS helps prevent eavesdropping and tampering (for example, man-in-the-middle attacks).
✓ Safe and reliable boot: Restrict system boot to signed and verified bootloader, BIOS, driver and OS files only. It helps prevent cyber-attacks by ensuring that the first instruction executed by a ztC Edge system processor is authentic and specifically designed.
✓ Additional hardware sensor: Monitors SSD temperature, voltage, and usage to provide a continuous estimate of life expectancy. Solid state drives (SSDs) tend to fail more often over time. Monitoring the aging and usage of solid-state drives helps customers predict when they might fail. Additionally, by proactively planning for failures, customers can minimize the likelihood of data loss.
✓ Performance monitoring of applications and virtual machines: Provides greater visibility into system and application performance. Metrics such as CPU usage, memory usage, and used disk space are now monitored at the virtual machine, guest operating system (OS), and application level. Customers can also set thresholds and receive alerts at the guest OS or application level.
✓ OPC UA support: Enables customers to easily incorporate ztC Edge system information into existing industrial control environments using OPC UA, a communication protocol commonly used in industrial automation. Now customers can easily configure their ztC Edge system as an OPC server, sending information to display in their dashboards and tools.
✓ Fault tolerance: The ztC Edge availability tier leverages a unique software-based check-pointing and state-pointing engine, so customers can scale the desired level of resiliency to the criticality of their workload, even at the virtual machine level . By replicating data written to disk and data in memory—even non-cached data—both nodes can take over for each other in the event of a failure. Customers can run mixed fault tolerance and high availability workloads on the same ztC Edge system. This feature is only available on the new ztC Edge 110i hardware model.
✓ New hardware model – ztC Edge 110i: Each node of a ztC Edge 110i system includes a 6-core hyperthreaded processor, 2TB SSD storage space, more customer-available Ethernet ports, and faster 10Gb Ethernet adapters than a 100i system. These changes are required to support the availability features available in Stratus Redundant Linux 2.0. These specific features have been prioritized and incorporated into our offering based on the feedback we have received from our partners and potential prospects.
DO YOU WANT TO TRY THEM?