Today, we are announcing that our syslog-ng Store Box (SSB) appliance is going virtual-only – in 2026. The current generation of 3000 Series hardware is the end of the physical line, the final chapter of a long and fruitful product lifecycle. Customers can still purchase our SSB hardware appliances through August 31, 2023. Additionally, we will fully support them for three years beyond the end-of-sale date – until August 31, 2026. 

The future is virtual 

The main reason for introducing the hardware appliance for SSB was performance. We could maximize performance per dollar. The whole ethos of syslog-ng and syslog-ng Store Box is built around efficiency and high performance. We built the core software in C, and consistently enhanced performance with meticulous maintenance and by removing bottlenecks. To put it simply: we are incredibly proud of the performance we achieved with our syslog-ng hardware solutions. 

However, virtualization technologies have come a long way since we introduced the first SSB appliance – and enterprise environments changed. We have offered SSB virtual appliances (VAs) for a number of years and the uptake was phenomenal. Customers appreciate the flexibility of VAs, while the commoditization of server hardware removed the pressing need for milking every CPU cycle. Add to this the advanced virtualization features found in modern CPUs, and most of the original reasons to offer a hardware appliance melt away. 

Another argument for this change is focus. We have consolidated our efforts on supporting virtual environments and accelerating the development of new features. Phasing out the hardware appliance enables us to develop and refine virtual and cloud-based features requested by our customers. 

Rest assured, while letting go of hardware appliances was a hard decision to make, we stand behind the syslog-ng Store Box and we are looking forward to driving innovative capabilities for the virtual and cloud versions of this product line. 

Virtual appliance and cloud 

You have the freedom to run SSB as a hardware appliance, as a virtual appliance, and as a cloud workload on Microsoft Azure or Amazon Web Services. As we stated above, our focus is on the latter two: VAs and the cloud. Though very preliminary right now, we are exploring on expanding the list of supported virtualization environments beyond VMware ESXi and KVM. 

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