SmartConsole Administrative Tasks – Check Point

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I often get questions about the differences between the R80.10 and the newer iterations, especially from a SmartConsole perspective and my answer is “Nothing significant.”
While there are numerous changes at the kernel level and with added performance enhancements, there is little difference in how administrative tasks are completed via the SmartConsole. For instance, R80.40 adds an HTTPS Policy Layer to the SmartConsole (previously completed in Smart Dashboard).

David Dartt, our Check Point Certified Instructor, shares the differences between the R80.10 and the newer iterations from a SmartConsole perspective.

Two enhancements in the Smart Console, however, do bear call-out for new administrators: Multiple Session support and enhanced keyboard navigation options.

Multiple Session: In R80.10, each administrator was allowed to have one R/W session (private) open at any given moment. With the release of R80.20, an administrator can publish or discard multiple private sessions without impacting the private sessions they currently have open. Disabled by default, this is an easy option to enable. Under Manage & Settings | Sessions | Advanced, select the option to allow multiple Smart Console session.

David Dartt, our Check Point Certified Instructor, shares the differences between the R80.10 and the newer iterations from a SmartConsole perspective.

Keyboard Navigation: With the release of R80.20 the option to use the keyboard to navigate between the different SmartConsole fields has been enhanced significantly. Here are a few:

The following shortcuts work on specific views which support them:

Keystrokes Description
Ctrl+T Open New Tab
Ctrl+W or Ctrl+F4 Close Current Tab
Ctrl+Tab Move to next tab
Ctrl+Shift+Tab Move to previous tab
Delete Delete the currently selected item
Ctrl+A Select all elements
Esc Cancel operation or close window
Enter or mouse double-click Edit item

Outside of the SmartConsole, there are numerous updates and enhancements. Two in particular stand out from an administrative point of view:

The Gaia OS – beginning with R80.20, the Security Management Server supports both the older Linux kernel 2.6 or the Linux 3.10 kernel using the xfs file system defaulting to a 64-bit Gaia kernel. The option to change the kernel has been removed from the Gaia OS Web UI. The gateway continues to use the Linux 2.6 kernel. R80.40 only supports the 3.10 kernel.

David Dartt, our Check Point Certified Instructor, shares the differences between the R80.10 and the newer iterations from a SmartConsole perspective.

The fwmonitor command – beginning with R80.20, subtle changes were made to this useful monitoring tool, key being that Accelerated packets can now be monitored without disabling SecureXL.

For more information about updates and enhancements on the various versions, refer to the Check Point documentation:

R80.20 Release guide                R80.30 Release guide             R80.40 Release guide