New CheckPoint Appliances

[Aidan_Luby]

Seeing as there's once again new CheckPoint appliances I wanted to get a thread going so we can collect some knowledge on the new units here.

There was a Press Release on Tuesday January 14th, 2020 about the new units. It looks like a 3600 Quantum Security Gateway, 6200 Quantum Security Gateway, 6600 and 6900 Quantum Security Gateways, and a 16000 Quantum Turbo Hyerscale Gateway.

Firstly I have to laugh a bit at the new naming as I type out the new Quantum naming, especially for the 16000 Quantum Turbo Hyperscale Gateway (what a mouthful); but I also wonder if the new Quantum naming is so that if people search for Quantum (thinking of Quantum computing) and CheckPoint at the same time they'll finally get a result.

I've also been interested in the 6000 series as we were considering a 6500 cluster but noticed the 6500 and 6800 that came out last year still do not support the new 3.10 kernel, but the 6200, 6600 and 6900 units do. I do remember researching the CPU in the 5800 (Intel Xeon E3-1285L v4) which released in May 2016 compared to the CPU in the 6500 (Intel Core i7 4790S) which released in January 2019 and noticed that the older 5800 unit actually has a newer CPU. This has left me hoping that the new "Quantum" gateways actually have a proper hardware refresh with newer generation CPU's and DDR4 RAM.

Another interesting thing I noticed is the new 6200 unit seems to have a different CPU (or is handicapped) based on which SKU you buy. The datasheet shows: 

• 1x CPUs, 2 physical cores, 4 virtual cores (Base, Plus)
• 1x CPUs, 4 physical cores (Turbo)

This is the first time I can remember CheckPoint changing the CPU so much on the same model.

Has anyone else gotten their hands on the new units or any interesting information you'd like to share? 😃🤔

[PhoneBoy]

We put out the press release primarily because we had announced the new appliances at CPX 360 in Bangkok.
Don't believe they are shipping just yet.
The new appliances will definitely require the updated kernel (to be default in R80.40) so I would imagine they have newer processors as well.

[Aidan_Luby]

I do see in the appliance accessories guide that the memory for the 6500 is still DDR3 and the memory for the new units all seem to be DDR4 so I'm guessing that means there's newer motherboards/processors/etc. in the new 6000's. Although the previously released 6800 also has DDR4 so maybe it's just the 6500 that has more outdated hardware in the 6000 lineup.