1500 SMB Appliances and Watchtower: TechTalk and Q&A

[PhoneBoy]

On 13th November 2019, @Amir_Ayalon and @Nir_Lukach gave a TechTalk on the newly released SMB Appliances (1500 Series) plus a bit about the Watchtower, a mobile app to monitor and maintain SMB appliances.

Materials available to CheckMates members:

• Slides for
  • 1500 Series Appliances
  • WatchTower
• Video

Q&A asked during the session will be posted as comments to this post.

[PhoneBoy]

How can the 1500 Appliances be centrally managed?

You can either use SMP, R80.40 and above management (currently in EA), or R80.30 with a future Jumbo Hotfix.

Are the 1550/1590 Appliances ruggedized?

No, but we are planning a replacement for the 1200R.

Will the 700/1200R/1400 Appliances run the new R80.20 SMB code?

No, and currently this not planned.

Are the 1550/1590 Appliances running regular Gaia or Embedded Gaia?

Embedded Gaia.

Is clustering supported on the 1550/1590 Appliances?

Yes, and it is configured similarly to the previous SMB appliances.

Is more than one WAN/DMZ port supported?

Yes, you can configure LAN ports as WAN or DMZ.

Were there enhancements with the WiFi?

On the 1590, yes. Refer to the following table from sk157412:

Feature	802.11n	802.11ac Wave 1 1470/1490/1550	802.11ac Wave 2 1590
MU-MIMO	Not Supported	Not Supported	Supported
Adjacent Channel Bonding	40MHz	80MHz	160MHz
Channel width 20MHz, 40MHz	Supported	Supported	Supported
Channel width 80MHz	Not Supported	Supported	Supported
Channel width 80MHz + 80MHz And 160Mhz	Not Supported	Not Supported	Supported
Non-Adjacent Channel Bond	Not Supported	Not Supported	Supported: 80MHz + 80MHz
Dynamic Bandwidth Allocation	Not Supported	Not Supported	Supported
Implicit Feedback Beamforming	Not Supported	Not Supported	Supported
Explicit Feedback Beamforming	Not Supported	Not Supported	Supported
Operating Band MIMO Spatial	2.4Ghz & 5GHz	5GHz	5GHz
Streams	3 streams	3 streams	4 streams
Modulation	64 QAM	56 QAM	256 QAM
MIMO Type	Single User (SU)	Single User (SU)	Multi User (MU)
Antenna gain	3dbi	3dbi	5dbi
MCS Support	MCS7	MCS7	MCS9

Is Content Awareness supported?

Not currently, but it is planned.

Is there a simple way to migrate from 1400/R77.20.x to 1500/R80.20?

Currently, no, but we are working on a tool that facilitates this that should be available soon.

Does the SMP portal work the same with the 1500 Appliances or are there enhancements when this model links to the portal?

It works the same, plus several adjustments and enhancements to cover the new capabilities.

Is Zero Touch deployment still possible with the 1500 Appliances?

Yes.

Can we use Domain Objects (FQDN) in these devices?

If the device is centrally managed, yes. Locally managed, not yet, but it is planned.

Can these gateways connect directly to an Identity Collector?

Not currently, but support is planned.

Will demo700.checkpoint.com be updated with R80 version (or a demo1500.checkpoint.com)

It is planned, yes.

When deployed locally managed, the logsearch was very poor, is this better in R80.20?

It works similar to R77.20 in this regard.

[Oskar_Svedman]

Did I hear wrong or is SMP free now to use central management?

[G_W_Albrecht]

SMP is the SMB management portal and central management is central management - these are not the same and have very different price tags. What should be free now ?

[Oskar_Svedman]

Yes but if you watch the presentation and about 34:36 they talk about SMP and say something like "first of all it's free".
Or do they mean something else?

[Amir_Ayalon]

Hi

SMP is now free for 1500 appliances.

[G_W_Albrecht]

In which form SMP is free ? As an On-Premise Server ? Or do you mean restricted cloud management capabilities ? I fear that we would more need such freebies for 7xx / 14xx devices - for a 1500 we will need central management by SMS to use firmware 80.20 features, and this is still not in EA...

So no one today will buy a 1500 if he knows what he does 😉.

[Shawn_Fletcher]

any eta on the JHF for r80.30?

[Amir_Ayalon]

this week!

[Tommy_Forrest]

Should be getting mine in the mail on Tuesday.  Can't wait!

[Libor_Kovar]

Hi,
thanks for video.
Would you like post the slides or, at least, links mentioned there ?

[PhoneBoy]

I did not receive the slides until today.
They are now linked in the root post.

[Libor_Kovar]

Thanks a lot

[Julian_Sanchez]

Hello guys, 

I have a customer, that decided change to a new appliance 1590. About this I have a question

Is there a simple way to migrate from 1400/R77.20.x to 1500/R80.20?
Is tthere any update about this, or currently it not possible migrate from 1400/R77.X to 1500/R80.20?

So, If you have any guide about create a Cluster in SMB, can you share with me?

Regards, 

Julian S.

[PhoneBoy]

I believe the plan was to provide some sort of configuration migration tool but I haven't seen it yet.

The product documentation should tell you how to create a cluster.

[Amir_Ayalon]

Hi Julian

we will soon release new firmware R80.20.05 (in about a week or so) that would support simple export / import

you can export your 14xx configuration and import into the 15xx. this would work for centrally managed devices.

for locally managed, you can use "show configuration" and manually copy setting.

thanks

[Julian_Sanchez]

Hello Amir, 

It will work for access control configurations, policies?

Thanks for the information.