A10 Networks has announced the launch of Harmony Controller-as-a-Service release 5.4, with enhancements that ease multi-cloud operational complexity and strengthen security.
Network admins for enterprises and service providers all know the pain of growth and change. Rapid or unexpected growth in users, subscribers and traffic and migration from centralised data centres to edge deployments, cloud, multi-cloud or hybrid cloud environments. The pandemic-inspired shift to distributed and suburban and home-based applications mean network administrators must continually scramble to ensure capacity is correctly and efficiently deployed to meet demand.
For the critical functions that A10 provides, including Thunder Application Delivery Controller (ADC), Thunder Convergent Firewall (CFW) and Thunder Carrier-grade Networking (CGN), customers are managing their Thunder appliances or virtual machines throughout this massive change using A10 Harmony Controller.
The A10 Harmony Controller provides centralised management and analytics for A10 secure application services, including A10 Thunder ADC, SSLi, CFW and CGN in multi-cloud environments for application configuration and policy enforcement. It is available on self-managed (on-premises and cloud) and as-a-Service.
Harmony Controller-as-a-Service has key advantages over self-managed systems, providing organisations with a centralised management interface for installation, configuration, monitoring and troubleshooting of physical and virtual devices wherever they are deployed.
Adding or changing Thunder devices used to require manually intensive processes for installation, licensing and registration of devices. Harmony Controller-as-a-Service makes those processes simple and easy to use. The service is operated by A10 to ensure its security and availability. The service creates simpler elastic capacity with a management interface that automatically scales as the system grows, supporting millions of users and thousands of devices.
Harmony Controller-as-a-Service, Release 5.4, includes the following enhancements:
- Stronger security with multi-factor authentication (MFA): Administrators can enable MFA for all the users in the account. MFA is available when the users are authenticated locally in Harmony Controller. Users need to install the Google Authenticator app on their mobile devices for a one-time set-up of MFA. While users can postpone set-up, the administrator can set an enforcement deadline. The device communicator role is created for users who use Harmony Controller to register Thunder devices
- Local authorisation after remote authentication: Users can authenticate on the remote servers, such as LDAP, TACACS +, or RADIUS and authorise locally in Harmony Controller. The user privileges and access information are stored in Harmony Controller
- Flexible device configuration backup: Users can schedule periodic device configuration backups with precise time zone and frequency
“With the Harmony Controller, organisations can efficiently automate deployment and operations of application services; increase operational efficiency and agility; enhance end-user experiences and reduce TCO; simplify the management of distributed application services to dramatically shorten troubleshooting times; receive alerts on performance or security anomalies; improve capacity planning and optimise IT infrastructure and cloud environments,” said Amr Alashaal, Regional Vice President, Middle East at A10 Networks.
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