Check Point VPN-1 - Platforms

Platforms

The VPN-1 software is installed on a separate operating system, which provides the protocol stack, file system, process scheduling and other features needed by the product. This is different from most other commercial firewall products like Cisco PIX and Juniper firewalls where the firewall software is part of a proprietary operating system.

Although traditionally sold as software only, VPN-1 is also sold in appliance form as Check Point's UTM-1 (starting 2006) and Power-1 appliances. These appliances run the SecurePlatform operating system.

As of version R70, VPN-1 supports the following operating systems:

• Windows Server 2003 and 2008;
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL);
• Check Point SecurePlatform (a Check Point Linux distribution based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, often called SPLAT);
• Nokia IPSO;
• Check Point Gaia (a Check Point Linux distribution, unifying IPSO and SecurePlatform into a single operating system);
• Crossbeam XOS and COS

Previous versions of Check Point firewall supported other operating systems including Solaris, HP-UX and IBM AIX. See the table in the Version History section below for details.

VPN-1 running on the Nokia platform on IPSO is often called a Nokia Firewall as if it were a different product, but in fact it runs the same VPN-1 software as other platforms.

Upon completing the acquisition of Nokia Security Appliance Business in 2009, Checkpoint started the project named Gaia aimed at merging two different operating systems—SecurePlatform and IPSO—into one. This new OS is positioned to finally replace both existing operating systems at some point in the future. On April 17, 2012 Check Point announced the general availability of the Gaia operating system as part of the R75.40 release.