The Blue Coat SG8100 secures Web communications and accelerates business applications across the distributed enterprise. The SG8100 Series represents the next generation in high-end appliance platforms.  This series of platforms is aimed at following applications.

• SG 8100 series appliances build the core of the enterprise’s application delivery infrastructure and is typically deployed at the data centers.
• SG 8100 series appliances can be deployed at the internet gateway, providing security and control of internet traffic for large enterprises.
• SG 8100 series appliances are used to front end the application servers shielding them from threats and accelerating the performance of applications by offloading the CPU intensive tasks such as compression, SSL encryption/decryption etc from servers.

Performance and Reliability

• Hot swappable disk drives and redundant power supply
• Secure object-based operating system with small footprint
• Extensible hardware options including disk drives, interfaces and memory
• Network functionality including:
  - Active/Active bridging support using virtual IP addressing for failover and remote
  installations
  - Routing configurations for gateway, route tables, RIP, DNS, and WCCP
  - Health checks performed on a forwarding host or external servers to verify
  status and availability of device
  - Configurable Time Services (UTC, NTP)
  - 19” Rack mountable chassis
• Integrated support services
  - View & submit service requests via the Blue Coat management interface
  - Send snapshots (trace files) to Blue Coat Support Services for faster problem resolution

Manageability

• Powerful management interface
  - Web-based management interface
  - Optional command line interface
  - SSH v2 and SSL/TLS administration
  - Alerting via SNMP, SMTP and logging administrative events
• Extended Management with Director
  - Distribute, backup, restore policy files for multiple SG appliances
  - Manage policies by device, group, or region
  - Job scheduling/job status reporting

Accelerate — Enterprise applications
The SG 8100 appliances form the core of an enterprise’s application delivery infrastructure. SG appliances feature MACH5 technologies allowing enterprises to deploy applications enterprise wide and providing users at remote locations same user experience over WAN links as the local users enjoy at the head quarters over a LAN.

Blue Coat’s application acceleration solution, featuring MACH5 (Multi-protocol Accelerated Caching Hierarchy) technology, enables organizations to accelerate delivery of all key productivity applications to users in branch and remote offices Key acceleration technologies that build up MACH5 are

• Bandwidth Management
• Protocol Optimization
• Object Caching
• Byte Caching
• Compression

Key applications accelerated using MACH5 are –

• File services
• E-mail/Exchange
• Web applications
• Video and Audio (Rich media applications)
• Secure Web (encrypted SSL) applications

In addition, SG 8100 appliances can accelerate web applications by offloading CPU intensive tasks from web servers and thus enabling web servers to run application logic faster.

Protect and Control — Gateway traffic
The SG provides a layered policy approach allowing companies to balance their Web communication needs with current business and Internet risks. The SG provides unmatched flexibility and scalability.

• Proxy support for multiple protocols
  - HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, SOCKS, AOL IM, Yahoo IM, Microsoft IM, MMS, RTSP,
  QuickTime, TCP-Tunnel
  - Apply policy to all
• Content Filtering
  - On-box support for Blue Coat WebFilter, Websense, SmartFilter, SurfControl, ALSI Intersafe and ISS/Proventia
  - Performance gains through integrated caching
  - Define additional custom categories
• IM Logging and Controls
  - MSN, Yahoo!, AOL Messengers
  - Method level control settings
  - In band/out-of-band alerts
• Content Security
  - Block active content
  - Strip and replace Web content
  - Limit, strip or replace information in content headers
• Web virus scanning
  - Scan once, serve many cache benefit
  - ICAP off-box integration with SG
• P2P file sharing controls
  - Log and block P2P traffic
  - Prevent client downloads and ads
• Pop-up Ad blocking
  - Policy-based control
  - Deny/allow per application
• Streaming controls
  - MS, Real, QuickTime
  - Bandwidth optimization & splitting
• SSL Termination
  - Application front-ending (e.g. MS OWA, CRM/Siebel, Lotus Notes)
  - Reverse proxy mode application acceleration
  - Key rings and certificates

Visibility — Management Reporting
Visibility is the key to managing employee Web communications in the enterprise. Blue Coat provides the tools needed to log and track user interactions over the Internet and across corporate boundaries.

• Default logging
  - HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, SOCKS, TCP-Tunnel, ICP, IM, Windows Media, Real Media,
  QuickTime
  - Global log file limits and upload sizing
  - Client upload settings and scheduling
• Custom logging and trace files
  - Selectable fields/text/log formats
• Secure log transport off box
• SNMP Support
  - Trap settings, community strings
• Statistics
  - System usage
  - HTTP/FTP history
  - IM data
  - Streaming history
  - Resources
  - Efficiency
  - SOCKS client, connections, bytes
• Aggregate SG logs with Reporter
  - Predefined report capability by user, network, security, IM, Top-10 summaries
  - Secure browser access/role-based viewing
  - User/session tracking/monitor by category
  - Stream logs aggregation with scheduled email reports