Server IP Migration

The network infrastructure teams in large organizations occasionally need to move critical business servers to new IP addresses. Such migrations may be necessary for many reasons, such as: to upgrade to better hardware; or to support a new disaster-recovery data center; or to reflect a corporate re-organization such as a merger or acquisition.

It sometimes happens that the system administrators identify the new network segment, build the box, install the software and data – and then realize that they need to update the firewall policies to let all the clients of the old server access the new server. In a network with many firewalls, from multiple vendors, this can be a major headache and potentially disrupt critical business.

The question arises: How can you find all the rules that control the access to the old server? Each vendor, Check Point, Cisco and Juniper have their own configuration language, firewalls may be managed by different teams with different configuration methodologies, and there may be many legacy rules to deal with.

The problem is that mistakes can be very costly. If the administrators miss a relevant rule, on some firewall, and neglect to update it – then business traffic will be blocked once the new server is activated. Depending on the nature of the applications running on the server, the resulting downtime might mean millions of dollars in lost business.

The AlgoSec Firewall Analyzer (AFA) helps ensure that such catastrophes do not happen on an enterprise’s network when a server is relocated. With the AFA every rule in every firewall configuration of any vendor that is associated to a specific server IP is easily identified and the revised policy is audited prior to deployment. AlgoSec enables this through its power query engine. This ensures that business disruptions will not occur and that business critical applications remain intact securing the enterprise from losing revenue. The AlgoSec’s streamlined solution also ensures a shortened migration process.

For more information read our White Paper on Server IP Migration