Cobia Community Blog

We're an official VMware Virtual appliance!

As of today, Cobia has been accepted as an official VMware virtual appliance.  This means Cobia has been tested as a virtual appliance by the folks at VMware and passed all the tests they threw at it.  The Cobia virtual appliance is pre-built, pre-configured and ready to use in VMware as soon as it's downloaded.

Having a pre-built virtual appliance like Cobia saves you time, allowing you to have a fully built Cobia server up in running in just a few minutes more than it takes to download the software.  Because it's pre-configured, there's no OS or server changes that have to be made and you know you're running on a hardened OS.  If you need to have a firewall, router or DHCP server working in just a few minutes, a Cobia virtual appliance will have you working in almost no time.

If you haven't tried Cobia yet, download the virtual appliance today.  The Cobia virtual appliance is free, the VMware Server is free, all you have to lose is a little space on your hard drive.  And since the folks at VMware have done their testing, you know Cobia will work.

SafeAccess is Windows IT Pro Editors Choice!

If you're looking for a Network Access Control, here's one more reason for choosing SafeAccess:  we just were just picked as the Windows IT Pro Editors Choice in their review of software based NAC solutions!  To quote John Green, "StillSecure's   Safe Access gets my Editor's Choice for its clean 802.1x implementation, easy   manageability and flexible quarantine features."  We rock!

Thanks to Michael Ramm for pointing this out to me.

Cobia's growing up

We've got some exciting announcement's about Cobia this week at Interop:  two partner programs, the Cobia appliance and paid for support!  We've had huge amounts of interest from the partner channels, which means more options and support for everyone using Cobia.

We're working with a number of Value Added Resellers (VARs) to provide support and installation services for Cobia.  If you don't have the time or expertise to do a full installation of Cobia yourself, these are the people who will help you do it.  Our VAR partners will provide support and training on Cobia and will help you use it to it's fullest.  Our ISV's are creating additional modules that will allow you to extend the power of Cobia by using products like Cymphonix for traffi filtering or ArcMentor for dealing with Instant Messaging traffic.  We've got a lot more partners coming, which will really give you a lot to choose from.

Second, we're working with Portwell to offer a pre-configured Cobia appliance.  These systems are sweet, with a ton of options to choose from.  Our modular architecture and their configurable hardware make an excellent partnership, which means you get the best product possible.  This isn't an old style fixed appliance, it's fully upgradeable, both from a hardware and a software perspective. 

Finally, we're announcing paid-for support in addition to the Cobia Community.  Do you work for one of those companies that doesn't like open source because "there's no support"?  We're offering commercial support via email and phone 24x7, which will silence those concerns. The support in the forums is still there, but this will give you a much more immediate method for solving any problems you run into.  And it'll let your boss sleep a little better at night.

If you're in Las Vegas this week at Interop, stop by the Cobia booth.  You can see the Portwell system in action and will be able to talk to the folks from Cymphonix each day.  Not to mention you can get a t-shirt and possibly win an iPod Nano.  See you there!