topic Re: Dynamic balancing vs dynamic dispatcher in Firewall and Security Management

Dynamic balancing vs dynamic dispatcher

Roy_Smith — Thu, 11 Nov 2021 15:16:26 GMT

I feel like I'm missing something so I'm hoping someone clear this up for me please.

Is there a difference between CoreXL Dynamic Dispatcher and Dynamic Balancing for CoreXL? I've looked at sk105261 and sk164155 and both appear to do the same job, so am I reading them correctly?

Or is Dynamic Balancing just a different method of implementing the same thing?

Apologies if it seems obvious and thanks for any help in advance.

Many thanks
Roy

Re: Dynamic balancing vs dynamic dispatcher

PhoneBoy — Thu, 11 Nov 2021 19:06:11 GMT

Dynamic Dispatcher changes how the existing CoreXL instances are used.
Dynamic Balancing changes the SND/FWK split (ie number of CoreXL instances).
They are complimentary features.

Re: Dynamic balancing vs dynamic dispatcher

Roy_Smith — Fri, 12 Nov 2021 11:42:06 GMT

Thanks for the response.

With VSX, do you still to enable CoreXL on each VS before enabling dynamic dispatching?

Thanks
Roy

Re: Dynamic balancing vs dynamic dispatcher

PhoneBoy — Fri, 12 Nov 2021 18:17:36 GMT

I don't think you can disable CoreXL with VSX.
See also: https://supportcenter.checkpoint.com/supportcenter/portal?eventSubmit_doGoviewsolutiondetails=&solutionid=sk169352&partition=Advanced&product=VSX,

Re: Dynamic balancing vs dynamic dispatcher

Roy_Smith — Sun, 14 Nov 2021 09:51:32 GMT

I certainly have CoreXL disabled on some virtual systems, which is shown when I run fw ctl multik stat and it replies with "CoreXl is disabled" I have always put this down to the CoreXL instance, configured through Smartconsole, for the virtual system, being left at the default of 1. For virtual systems where I change this, then CoreXL is enabled and I can use fw ctl multik stat to see the connections across instance.

But for some virtual systems, where the CoreXL instance is 1 and I have used affinity to assign multiple CPU cores, how does the load get split across the CPUs? Or does it?

Re: Dynamic balancing vs dynamic dispatcher

PhoneBoy — Mon, 15 Nov 2021 04:56:33 GMT

CoreXL only makes sense in general if you have at least four cores assigned to a VS.
That said I think Dynamic Dispatcher will only work if CoreXL is enabled and is above a certain number of cores (don't recall offhand).

Re: Dynamic balancing vs dynamic dispatcher

_Val_ — Mon, 15 Nov 2021 08:04:35 GMT

Sorry, Dameon, this is not exactly correct: "CoreXL only makes sense in general if you have at least four cores assigned to a VS."

Even with 2 cores per VS, dynamic dispatcher is enabled and working, with R80.20 and up. Before that version, it was not supported for VSX.

However, there are known issue with uneven distribution, mentioned in sk169352 and subsequently fixed.