topic We need to Reuse some old 21000 appliances in Firewall and Security Management

We need to Reuse some old 21000 appliances

Fred_Bbaale1 — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 12:56:47 GMT

We would like to reuse some old Checkpoint 21000 that we have replaced. We are thinking of installing Ubuntu , rather than throwing them away.

Why can't we boot from the Linux USB devices we have prepared for this?

Re: We need to Reuse some old 21000 appliances

the_rock — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 13:39:04 GMT

Um, not sure that might be possible...anyway, what do you get when you try to boot up?

Andy

Re: We need to Reuse some old 21000 appliances

G_W_Albrecht — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:07:27 GMT

Ask your local CP SE if that is possible - this is OEM hardware, so possibly Ubuntu does not support it. Why did you not do a Trade In when replacing them?

Re: We need to Reuse some old 21000 appliances

Bob_Zimmerman — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 19:10:10 GMT

Check Point branded servers can definitely boot from USB. I've installed Windows and ESX on a few.

The only major quirk related to booting is they have a real, honest-to-goodness BIOS, while almost every other server vendor has used UEFI since 2005 or so. They can't boot from GPT disks, and they need a BIOS-compatible bootloader. Your Ubuntu drive probably expects UEFI.

Re: We need to Reuse some old 21000 appliances

PhoneBoy — Thu, 25 Jan 2024 16:00:57 GMT

Officially, the only thing that is supported on Check Point appliances are Check Point operating systems.
Having said that, since Gaia is Linux-based, it should be possible to load other OSes through booting off a USB drive.
Current (and past) appliance models use BIOS (not UEFI) and legacy partitioning, so keep that in mind when creating your installer.

The above does not apply to Quantum Spark appliances, which are ARM based and use an embedded-style OS (thus why it is called Gaia Embedded).