Todd Ignasiak

As discussed in Altor Networks recent VirtSec blog entries, VMware's new vSphere release adds the powerful new VMsafe security APIs to their virtual data center platform. In this blog post, I'll take a little deeper look at VMsafe's structure and the capabilities it gives us. VMsafe is split into two main components, fast-path and slow-path. These are roughly analogous to a switch's data plane and control plane or fast switching and process switching in a Cisco router. Fast-path operates inside the ESX hypervisor, plugging into the vSwitch's packet processing path. Slow-path operates within a VM, and connects to the fast-path via a local network connection. Fast-path allows efficient access to network traffic as it is being forwarded by the vSwitch. Running in the kernel context, we get packets with minimum overhead, no context switching, and no memory copies. So, ... (more)

Altor Unveils the Altor VF 3.0: VMsafe Virtual Firewall with Intrusion Detection

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Altor Unveils the Altor VF 3.0: VMsafe Virtual Firewall with Intrusion Detection Industry 1st fast-path Firewall Delivers Defense-in-Depth, Performance and Reliability to Virtual Servers & Clouds Redwood City, Calif―July 7, 2009―Altor Networks, provider of best-in-class virtualization and cloud security solutions, today announced the Altor VF 3.0 virtual firewall with integrated intrusion detection. Developed using VMsafe APIs, the Altor VF offers robust defense-in-depth virtualization security with mission critical reliability and value through breakth... (more)