upgrading 4800 to 5800: core allocation question

[D_TK]

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. 

[PhoneBoy]

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

[Timothy_Hall]

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.

[HeikoAnkenbrand]

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

[HeikoAnkenbrand]

Or here:

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

[James_Hatton]

Great info.