A human hand holding a holographic representation of the world with multiple data points.

The biggest change on the network configuration settings, and probably the most convenient, was the removal of the mandatory management interfaces. On version 7 of the WGA, the first two NICs attached to the appliance automatically goes to the two management interfaces M.1 and M.2. The succeeding NICs would go to the 4 application interfaces P.1 – P.4. On version 8, up to 8 interfaces can be configured with labels 1.1-1.8.

On version 8, the management and application traffic can now be assigned on the IP address rather than the network interfaces. Any or all IPs configured can be assigned as management. Both management and application can be configured on a single interface if both IPs are on the same subnet. You are forced to configure IPs on single interface when they belong to the same subnet. You also have the option to configure a set of IPs to a single interface. This is quite useful when managing multiple WebSeal instances on the appliance.

One advantage of this setup is flexibility in terms of interface assignment. However, a big downside that I noticed is the inability to force egress traffic on a specific IP when you have multiple IPs on one interface (same subnet). Static routes are configured using the network interface and gateway and the values would be the same for both IPs in this case. From several tests, I noticed that the traffic always goes out the first IP that was configured. This is a pain especially when you have firewall rules restricted to specific IPs.

The routing configuration screen has been quite an improvement from the previous version as well. The first thing I noticed was that the default interface is now clearly shown. The comment box is also a nice plus when you are managing multiple routes. The ability to enable and disable specific routes without having to delete them was also added.

Improved Network Configuration Settings in WGA Version 8

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