When will R80.30 GA be available?

[HeikoAnkenbrand]

When will R80.30 GA be available?

Is there a release date here yet?

Regards

Heiko

[Danny]

Probably right at or shortly after CPX 2019 in Vienna.

[HeikoAnkenbrand]

I hope at the CPX 2019 in Vienna.

[Martin_Valenta]

Isn't it too fast?  R80.20 GA is not fully available, on places like 3.10 on Openservers/Appliances..

[HeikoAnkenbrand]

Even if the version R80.20 is officially recommended, I would like to use it with the customer.  Many customers don't see through the versions anymore.

I explain to all customers the versions and the Linux kernel versions and file systems and and and.

Management: R80.20.m1 > R80.20   > R80.20.m2

Gateway for Open Server:

HP DL 360/380 G9 > R80.20 with 2.60 Kernel and old file system

HP DL 360/380 G10 > R80.20 with 3.10 Kernel and XFS file system

It is a little bit chaos. I would prefer a new version R80.30.

[Danny]

R80.30 will be available soon. Only use Management Feature releases for a reason, otherwise stay with the GA and the official vendor recommendation.

[PBC_Cyber]

More like never use Management Feature releases anywhere but a lab.

[Dorit_Dor]

We will release maintrain twice a year and release it in granular way. Initially for those who need it specifically and later make it default. 

You can leverage this to quickly use what you need

if you do not need it, you can wait for it to become the default. You will not see it in cpuse initially like we did in r80.20. So in fact until its really it will take time until its widely adopted like happened w r80.20. 

As indicated M releases are special management only releases and they will never become default - you can move between M releases or from M to maintrain. Use M releases if you need new functionality that is delivered (or wat for the main train and use it there). 

The goal is to enable new capabilities fast targetting the audiance that need it. 

[HeikoAnkenbrand]

THX Dorit for this information. 

Now to my main question.

When will R80.30 GA (management + gateways) be available?

[Dorit_Dor]

This quarter

Bring more EAs and we will release faster

[JozkoMrkvicka]

---

@Dorit_Dor wrote:
This quarter

Bring more EAs and we will release faster

---

End of Q1 2019 is around the corner 🙂

[RickHoppe]

I’ve missed the R80.30 Public EA in this discussion. Will that be skipped if you plan to release the GA in Q1?

[Dorit_Dor]

With short project, we dont have time for significant public ea so right now its mostly private ea ... we may still have public ea for sort while before release but if you want to join the ea, please join the private ea today 

[RickHoppe]

Currently I don’t have production customers willing to participate to the private EA. With the public EA it would be easier for them, and us engineers, to participate and test it before the GA will be installed on production environments.

[Kim_Moberg]

Sad. I have only have had possitive experience. Great EA team and fast R&D guys working hard to solve issues if they occur.

I can strongly recommend it. 

Best regards

Kim

[RickHoppe]

That’s great. I do believe the potential it has with being directly in touch with R&D but most customers do see risks.

[Kim_Moberg]

I understand. Been participating in EA program the last 5 years. Good experience and very competent techies. Kudos to Alexandra Gofman and Alexander Sazonov and Pavel Levitan 

I think the problem is the customee being told it is early and running bleading edge technology which is true but full attention from EA team and R&D.

I am running R80.20 AC now and the first time we installed the CPU usage went high. Then we did fail-back to local (firewall host) and it normalized and waited to the next EA halo take to be installed.

Now running a stable version.

Customers will experience a strong relationship with the EA team and the more they involve themselves in the process the closer they are with check point. This is what we want.

They also get new features and technologies that is being developed and test it into production.

If it does go wrong with the upgrade they can also cancel the upgrade and go back to normal production. This never happens to me.

Customers needs to be involved and cannot just rely on check point partners taking care of the installation and communication. It is been check point customer and check point directly. Thats how I see it.

If you need any reference please dont hesitate to contact me.

Br

Kim

[RickHoppe]

Thanks for sharing your experiences with production EA. It is valuable PR for production EA’s that I miss. Perhaps Check Point can share more customer experiences when announcing EA’s to get more customers involved.

[Kim_Moberg]

Yeah we need more user experience in th EA program in production.

Have you read this publication written by Niels Poulsen which by the way also a good friend of me?

He is explaining the EA program in production environment from a Security Engineer point of view. Inspirational I think.

https://community.checkpoint.com/people/9ab1752a-c2b8-463d-b0d8-1cb5d8f2e500/blog/2017/11/23/do-you-...

BR

Kim

[RickHoppe]

A very good read indeed. It gives me more background info what I can use in the future. Without being part of the EA I understand the big effort the EA teams and R&D deliver and really do appreciate it. Who knows what the future brings.

[HeikoAnkenbrand]

Yes it is a great EA team and all R&D guys working hard to solve issues if they occur.

I can also strongly recommend it. 

Regard

Heiko

[RickHoppe]

Still one question though. Will it be released as R80.30.M1 in Q1 or R80.30 GA?

[PhoneBoy]

There will likely be a R80.30.M1, but it will be after R80.30 GA. 

[Gilad_Tavasi]

Good news, we decided to release it to public EA this week. Looking forward to your feedback.

[JozkoMrkvicka]

[RickHoppe]

Great! Fine example of how CheckMates can work for the community and Check Point.

[Martin_Valenta]

How many EA is running on big environments? Like 12 domains on MDS/MLM which manage around 300+ gateways. I would guess that it’s mainly running on smaller setups.

[Kim_Moberg]

Good questions

EA team emulate your setup even before they come and install EA version.

Using EA team using their eacollect data scripts of SMS and gateways.

You upload data export to their sftp server and then the Technician starts restoring and replicating your setup.

In that way they are preparing and asking questions to understand your network.

When they arrive they have gameplan for the EA.

This works for us.

Best regards 

Kim

[Kim_Moberg]

I do think Check Point has EA Program for MDS/MLM. Have you asked them?

Br

Kim

[JozkoMrkvicka]

Do we know what will be the next naming after R80.30 ?

R80.40 ? R81.10 ? R90 ?