Focus

Benefits of Virtual Systems

Table of Contents

Virtual systems provide the same basic functions as a physical firewall, along with additional benefits:

Segmented administration—Different organizations (or customers or business units) can control (and monitor) a separate firewall instance, so that they have control over their own traffic without interfering with the traffic or policies of another firewall instance on the same physical firewall.
Scalability—After the physical firewall is configured, adding or removing customers or business units can be done efficiently. An ISP, managed security service provider, or enterprise can provide different security services to each customer.
Reduced capital and operational expenses—Virtual systems eliminate the need to have multiple physical firewalls at one location because virtual systems co-exist on one firewall. By not having to purchase multiple firewalls, an organization can save on the hardware expense, electric bills, and rack space, and can reduce maintenance and management expenses.
Ability to share IP-address-to-username mappings—By assigning a virtual system as a User-ID hub, you can share the IP-address-to-username mappings across virtual systems to leverage the full User-ID capacity of the firewall and reduce operational complexity.