Introduction
The Endian 6.5.0 release is a major evolution in our development of the next generation EndianOS platform. It is a complete overhaul of the EndianOS system and provides a ton of new features and improvements over the previous version.
Availability
The Endian UTM 6.5 platform is now available for all new hardware, software, virtual appliances!
For existing Endian UTM 5.x users, we will be rolling out an upgrade option in the next few weeks.
Known Issues
- Hotspot is not currently available (but will be added in a future release)
- Network monitoring (NTOP) has been replaced with the all new Network Awareness feature
- SPAM Training feature is not currently available
Highlights
- New Linux kernel (5.10) with greatly improved performance and driver support
- Improved and more reliable services and daemons management with systemd
- Faster and improved package manager (dnf)
- Introduced new Frontend and Backend Framework with OpenAPI Support (HTTP/SMTP Proxy)
See your network visually like never before with our all new Network Awareness application built from the ground up with our high performant and scalable deep-packet network inspection agent. Get real-time network bandwidth information with top applications in use on the network. Drill down further to identify top network activity and flows and quickly take action to reduce or eliminate devices or applications creating bottlenecks. Go back in time with our incredible Network History feature to get historical information and pull up moments in time to analyze all past network activity!
Docker Integration 
Endian is proud to announce that with the release of UTM 6.5 that the EndianOS platform now has Docker integrated so that customers can run their own Docker containers. A Docker container is a standard unit of software that packages up code and all its dependencies so the application runs quickly and reliably from one computing environment to another (docker.com). This feature provides Endian customers unparalleled capabilities by leveraging edge computing technology that enables hybrid or remote applications or micro-services to run at the network edge. Some of the advantages of Docker include (but are not limited to):
- Requires much less hardware and software resources than full-machine virtualization
- Reduce network latency and provide offline access to remote applications
- Increased application portability and faster software development and delivery
Multi-Zone Support
It's here! One of the longest anticipated features is now released with support for multiple internal network zones beyond the three original zones (Green, Orange, and Blue). This provides users with a fully extensible network security gateway that fully supports all of their networking needs. We've also extended the firewall, web filtering, email filtering, and relevant networking systems (like DHCP) to seamlessly integrate with the new network zone system.
Firewall Improvements
We've made major changes to the entire firewall architecture to dramatically reduce rule creation and/or modification. In addition to supporting creating and managing network objects through the firewall components, we've also added the capability to filter traffic by geographic location (GeoIP) which enables users to easily allow or block traffic from various countries. We also support time-based rules to allow for easy firewall rulesets based on business hours or other defined time structures.
IDS/IPS Mode and Advanced Networking
As part of the networking improvement, we've also released support for a new IDS mode (in addition to the existing IPS mode) which can greatly improve throughput performance. While we were at it, we went ahead and added some serious networking improvements including advanced TCP window scaling, support for untagged VLAN traffic, bonding mode configuration in the web UI, and support for DHCP relay.
Web & Email Proxy System Overhaul
We've completely rebuilt the web filtering and email filtering backend and frontend using a brand new "API focused" implementation (based on OpenAPI). You still get all the great features you know and love with a new, more intuitive interface. This new system will greatly improve the implementation of future features and improvements and offer more data extensibility and validation to increase their overall robustness.
Improved High Availability
The resilience and redundancy of the new UTM is critical to business continuity so we've expanded and improved the high availability. With 6.5 you can now have up to three (3) UTMs in a high availability cluster which means that even if one unit fails you will still have a pair of UTMs acting in high availability offering the highest levels of reliability to your business and your customers. In addition, you can now make changes on any UTM appliance in the high availability cluster and the changes will automatically be synchronized across all units so this greatly minimizes the risk of errors or downtime due to misconfigurations or system changes.
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