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eWEEK Labs Walk-Through: Top 5 Rated VMware Virtual Appliances
by Cameron Sturdevant
StoneGate Virtual IPS Appliance
Stonesoft’s StoneGate Virtual IPS is a ready-to-deploy VM designed to protect internal virtual networks and servers from attacks. The product works in conjunction with the StoneGate virtual or physical firewall/VPN offerings and uses packet inspection and event correlation to stop attacks inside virtual environments. It requires other nonvirtual Stonesoft products to operate.
CensorNet Virtual Appliance
The CensorNet Virtual Appliance is a Web filter and content control virtual appliance that filters and monitors user Web activity. It can be used in any virtualization environment that supports OVF (Open Virtual Machine Format) appliances.
Symantec Brightmail Gateway Virtual Edition
The Symantec Brightmail Gateway provides anti-spam, anti-virus, content filtering and data loss prevention for e-mail and IM. The virtual appliance enables organizations to easily add or remove anti-spam capacity.
Virtual Network Security Analyzer
Altor Networks' Virtual Network Security Analyzer delivers real-time visibility and historical views into the virtual network activity. VNSA also helps data center administrators troubleshoot the virtual network, audit virtual machine usage and fulfill compliance requirements.
aCelera Virtual Appliance for Application Acceleration
Certeon's aCelera Virtual Appliance provides application acceleration over the WAN without using hardware. aCelera is optimized for applications such as content management and Web-based collaboration, and wide-area file services.
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VMware launched its "Virtual Appliance Marketplace" Nov. 7, 2006, offering prebuilt, ready-to-run enterprise software applications packaged with an operating system for download on a trial basis. Of the more than 300 virtual appliances, 39 are currently "certified production-ready" as part of a VMware program that promotes products that are ready for production. Although only under way for a month, products are getting rated. Here are the top five so far.