topic upgrading 4800 to 5800: core allocation question in General Topics

upgrading 4800 to 5800: core allocation question

D_TK — Mon, 01 Apr 2019 21:33:41 GMT

I'll be upgrading a 4800 cluster running R77.30 with 5800s running R80.20 in the near future. The 4800 is slightly under-powered for its current role, so we're upgrading it. Current blades: fw vpn urlf av appi ips identityServer SSL_INSPECT anti_bot

Current core split is 2/2 and RX-DRP is attached.

Question: should i leave SMT on and do 4/4 or 6fw/2 split... or disable and continue to do a 2/2 split.

Re: upgrading 4800 to 5800: core allocation question

PhoneBoy — Mon, 01 Apr 2019 22:38:54 GMT

My general rule is to stick with the defaults at first and adjust from there as required.

Re: upgrading 4800 to 5800: core allocation question

Timothy_Hall — Mon, 01 Apr 2019 22:39:52 GMT

First off if you haven't purchased your 5800s yet, be sure to take a look at the price/performance of the new 6500 appliances. Based on SPU benchmarks a 6500 is about 20% faster than a 5800 but at about half the price. The 6500 is in a pretty nice spot. A 6800 is slightly more than twice as fast as a 5900 but for about the same price as a 5900.

Based on the blades you have enabled, SMT/Hyperthreading will probably be helpful. Run fwaccel stats -s on your current 4800, the more traffic you have in PXL (and to a somewhat lesser degree F2F) the more SMT will help. As far as the split for the new box that will once again depend on what fwaccel stats -s shows, but based on your blades for 8 cores I'd probably start with the default 2/6 and go from there.

Re: upgrading 4800 to 5800: core allocation question

HeikoAnkenbrand — Sat, 06 Apr 2019 20:01:34 GMT

First step upgrading 4800 to 5800.

If you have performance problems with the default settings, you can adjust the system.

More see here:

- R80.x - Performance Tuning Tip - Intel Hardware
- R80.x - Performance Tuning Tip - AES-NI
- R80.x - Performance Tuning Tip - SMT (Hyper Threading)
- R80.x - Performance Tuning Tip - Multi Queue
- R80.x - Performance Tuning Tip - Connection Table

Re: upgrading 4800 to 5800: core allocation question

HeikoAnkenbrand — Sat, 06 Apr 2019 20:00:36 GMT

Or here:

Performance Tuning R80.10 Administratio Guide
Performance Tuning R80.20 Administration Guide

Re: upgrading 4800 to 5800: core allocation question

James_Hatton — Thu, 25 Apr 2019 18:44:43 GMT

Great info.