
12 | SRA 6.0 Administrator’s Guide
SRA Virtual Appliance
The SRA Virtual Appliance is a virtual machine that runs the SRA series software on a VMware
platform. All software components, features, and functionality described in this guide are
supported by the SRA Virtual Appliance, except High Availability and SSL Offloading.
Deploying the SRA as a virtual appliance allows leveraging of shared computing resources to
optimize utilization, easy migration and reduced capital costs. The SRA Virtual Appliance
provides the following benefits:
•Cost savings:
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Multiple virtual machines can run on a single server, reducing hardware costs, power
consumption, and maintenance costs.
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Microsoft Windows Server is not required, eliminating the cost of the Windows license.
•Operational ease:
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In a virtual environment, it is easy to commission new servers or decommission old
ones, or to bring servers up or down.
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Installation is accomplished by importing a file into the virtual environment, with no
need to run an installer.
•Security:
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The SRA Virtual Appliance provides the same hardened operating system that comes
with the SRA hardware appliances.
The elements of basic VMware structure must be implemented prior to deploying the SRA
Virtual Appliance. For detailed information about deploying the SRA Virtual Appliance, see the
Dell SonicWALL SRA Virtual Appliance Getting Started Guide, available at:
http://www.sonicwall.com/us/support/3893.html
SRA Software Components
SRA appliances provide clientless identity-based secure remote access to the protected
internal network. Using the Virtual Office environment, SRA appliances can provide users with
secure remote access to your entire private network, or to individual components such as File
Shares, Web servers, FTP servers, remote desktops, or even individual applications hosted on
Citrix or Microsoft Terminal Servers.
Although SRA protocols are described as clientless, the typical SRA portal combines Web,
Java,and ActiveX componentsthat are downloaded from the SRA portaltransparently, allowing
users to connect to a remote network without needing to manually install and configure a VPN
client application. In addition, SRA enables users to connect from a variety of devices, including
Windows, Macintosh, and Linux PCs. ActiveX components are only supported on Windows
platforms.
For administrators, the SRA Web-based management interface provides an end-to-end SSL
VPNsolution. This interface canconfigure SRA users, access policies,authentication methods,
user bookmarks for network resources, and system settings.
For clients, Web-based SRA customizable user portals enable users to access, update, upload,
and download files and use remote applications installed on desktop machines or hosted on an
application server. The platform also supports secure Web-based FTP access, network
neighborhood-like interface for file sharing, Secure Shell versions 1 and 2 (SSHv1) and
(SSHv2), Telnet emulation, VNC (Virtual Network Computing) and RDP (Remote Desktop
Protocol) support, Citrix Webaccess, bookmarks for offloaded portals (external Web sites), and
Web and HTTPS proxy forwarding.