With the continued growth and importance of data centers comes the unfortunate reality of data breaches and the need for stronger and more powerful security systems. Cisco has upped the ante in data protection with its new Secure Firewall 4200 Series, which provides large enterprises and data center service providers alike with exceptional performance, strong scalability plus a host of innovative features. AMD and Cisco have an extensive history of collaboration, including the prior-generation Cisco Secure Firewall 3100 Series which garnered accolades and strong customer adoption. Now with its latest Secure Firewall 4200 Series, Cisco has added new capabilities that are enabled by the powerful, dynamic duo of AMD EPYC™ Embedded 7003 processors and Versal™ Adaptive SoCs.
Cisco premiered the new Secure Firewall 4200 Series at Cisco Live in Las Vegas on June 4-8, 2023, and will be showcasing it at Cisco Live in Melbourne on December 5-8, 2023.
According to Cisco, the new Secure Firewall 4200 Series provides twice the throughput of Cisco’s previous-generation firewall, while supporting a wide variety of network interfaces, all in a slim, space-saving single rack unit form factor. The new 4200 Series is capable of massive expansion, optimized for maximum flexibility and scalability with high-port density and the ability to cluster up to 16 firewall devices together that act as a single powerful firewall—managed as one device.
Three different models are available, and each can be deployed in both firewall and dedicated intrusion prevention system (IPS) modes, providing versatile deployment options and exceptional threat defense across a wide range of use cases. Depending on the model, a single 4200 Series firewall can deliver 65-140 Gbps of throughput with application visibility and control (AVC) and intrusion prevention system (IPS) capabilities. When expanded to a 16-node cluster, it can inspect over 1.5 Tbps of traffic. For inline sets and passive interfaces, the 4200 Series also supports Q-in-Q (stacked VLAN) with the ability to handle up to two 802.1Q headers in a packet.
“We are proud of our close collaboration with AMD for Cisco’s newest Secure Firewall 4200 Series that deliver leading-edge performance in critical ‘always on’ secure environments using AMD EPYC Embedded 7003 processors,” said Nazmul Rajib, senior product marketing manager at Cisco Systems, Inc. “The combination of Cisco’s leadership platform security and hardware root-of-trust protection with AMD EPYC processors and Versal Adaptive SoCs, has enabled Cisco to create a world-class firewall built to protect the most critical information in enterprise data centers of all sizes.”
In addition to providing ample compute density and performance-per-watt scalability, AMD EPYC 7003 Series processors include up to four terabytes of memory capacity, providing the ultra-low latency and necessary compute agility to identify and prioritize security threats in seconds. Data access is further enhanced with extra-large caches, reaching up to 256MB per CPU. All of this helps enable the ability to efficiently utilize up to 64 cores per CPU. 128lanes of PCIe® Gen4 (up to 160 in 2P configuration) offered by AMD EPYC 7003 series CPUs pushes the ability to efficiently access high-speed network interface cards, high-speed storage, and multiple accelerators. Each of the 64 CPU cores provides two hardware threads or logical CPU cores. The single-socket and dual-socket configurations are powered by up to 128 and 256 logical CPU cores, respectively.
AMD EPYC Embedded 7003 Series processors help reduce bottlenecks, with the processing performance to handle heavy-workload, “always on” networking and computing requirements with enterprise-grade reliability.
|
Feature |
Secure Firewall 4215 |
Secure Firewall 4225 |
Secure Firewall 4245 |
|
Processor |
AMD 7543 (240 W) |
AMD 7763 (280 W) |
Two AMD 7763 (280 W per CPU) |
|
Core count |
Single socket 32-core |
Single socket 64-core |
Dual socket two 64-cores |
|
Core clock |
2.8 GHz (boost up to 3.7 GHz) |
2.45 GHz (boost up to 3.5 GHz) |
2.45 GHz (boost up to 3.5 GHz) |
|
System memory |
8 x 32 GB (256 GB) at 3200 Mt/s |
8 x 64 GB (512 GB) at 3200 Mt/s |
16 x 64 GB (1 TB) at 3200 Mt/s |
|
Throughput* |
65 Gbps |
80 Gbps |
140 Gbps |
|
Form factor |
1 rack unit | 1 rack unit | 1 rack unit |
Throughput* - Throughput is measured with Secure Firewall Threat Defense (FTD) software inspecting 1024B traffic under ideal test conditions, running firewall, application visibility and control (AVC), and intrusion and prevention system (IPS) features. Throughput figures measured and provided by Cisco.
A key feature of the Secure Firewall 4200 Series—the advanced Crypto-Accelerated Architecture— is enabled by Cisco software operating in tandem with the addition of another AMD device family—Versal Adaptive SoCs. These adaptable and scalable SoCs drive the 4200 Series’ Encrypted Visibility Engine (EVE) which allows administrators to see inside of encrypted network traffic without decryption. The architecture speeds up transport layer security and IPsec decryption, providing deeper visibility in real time into encrypted traffic. When privacy is a concern, the encrypted visibility engine can be enabled to stop encrypted threats without decryption. This allows a security administrator to gain insight into what client of client application is running, keeping the network from having to go dark. Additional features of the Secure Firewall 4200 Series include:
- Dual network modules, supporting 1G,10G,25G,40G,100G,200G interfaces
- Dual solid-state drives handle event storage and malware analysis
- Dual management interfaces ensure uptime and resilience
- Fail-to-wire network modules enhance reliability and fault tolerance
The Cisco Secure Firewall 4200 Series is available now through authorized Cisco resellers.
To learn more about how AMD Embedded processing solutions are enabling networking and security leaders like Cisco to deliver the industry’s most advanced firewall solutions, visit https://www.amd.com/en/products/embedded.
