Ravello Systems, the world’s leading nested virtualization company, today launched networking and security Smart Labs that have the functionality of data center labs, combined with the elasticity of AWS and Google Cloud. Ravello’s Smart Labs are powered by a virtual overlay cloud with software-defined networking, with support for running existing VMware and KVM virtual appliances, in a fully fenced environment, with complete layer 2 access in the public cloud. In addition, entire hypervisor labs with ESXi or KVM can be run on Ravello, creating a unique enabler for malware testing and security sandboxing.

By delivering cloud-based labs where network and security implementations can be designed and modeled, Ravello has increased flexibility, reduced costs and limited risks for the entire ecosystem of networking and security technologies.

Virtual networks created in Ravello Smart Labs can be used for training, network modeling, planning for new security services, or examining “what-if” scenarios for the installed network. They can easily achieve a level of scale and accuracy not possible with traditional network and security simulation approaches.

“Our goal is to enable professionals to perform testing, design, and training exercises using real network and security appliance operating systems in the public cloud. For instance, VMware and KVM based virtual appliances are the most commonly available formats in the market, and not all of them, for example Juniper VPX and Arista Networks vEOS are available in formats that can run in the cloud,” said Navin Thadani, SVP Products at Ravello Systems. “However, Ravello’s nested virtualization technology, HVX, can run existing VMware or KVM virtual network or security appliances unmodified on AWS or Google cloud with L2 access and support for advanced functionality such as promiscuous mode, span ports, broadcast, multicast.”

Check Point Software Technologies Ltd., an international leader in the IT security domain, organizes several conferences throughout the year, in which hands-on labs are being conducted in order to communicate new product updates and best practices. Each lab consists of hundreds of attendees who need access to complex environments in which they can carry out the designated tasks. With Ravello, Check Point has been able to streamline the hands-on labs by offering on-demand provisioning and eliminating the need to configure and maintain hardware. “Ravello fit like a glove for our sales kickoff events needs. In addition to reducing our costs by 50%, the solution provides impressive scalability, on-the-fly provisioning and ease of use for trainers and trainees,” said Jonathan Fischbein, Senior Solution Manager at Check Point.

Besides access to full layer 2 networking in the cloud, Ravello enables most existing VMware and KVM virtual appliances to run unmodified on AWS and Google Cloud. For instance, users are already running Smart Labs for popular virtual appliances from Juniper Networks, Cisco, Check Point, Palo Alto Networks, F5 Networks, Citrix, Barracuda and Fortinet appliances on Ravello. Using Ravello, appliance vendors and their partners are able to rapidly provision demos, proof of concept labs and test environments for their virtual appliances. They can also accelerate training for their entire ecosystem ahead of a new software release. Enterprises can quickly upgrade test their own production deployments when new versions of networking and security virtual appliances are released, by replicating their data center environments in the public cloud and creating their own Smart Labs on Ravello.

Ravello’s networking and security Smart Labs are delivered as a service with a pay for usage pricing model. Pricing starts at $0.14 for 2 vCPU, 4 GB chunks and varies based on usage.