R80 hardware requirements

[_Val_]

Hi all,

it looks like Check Point is silent concerning any HW requirements for R80 installation (except SmartConsole ones, that actually made it to the release notes).

Not only we miss minimal requirements for installing R80 as Gaia. Any sizing recommendations are also missing. In my personal book, if Check Point relies on customer's trial and error discovery process for R80 transition, that might take a while.

Why HW requirements are not even mentioned? When can we expect to hear from Check Point for that matter?

[Dave_Hoggan]

Hi,

I too have this question. We are beginning to roll out R80 to the customer base and increasingly getting R80 upgrade queries in the pipe for deployment over the next few months, many of which include a hardware refresh.

I think there is no denying that R80 (management at least) is consuming significantly more resources than R77 does and java seems to be the culprit. The issue is not so much that more resources are being consumed, it is knowing the recommended sizing for R80 . 

Thanks,

Dave

[_Val_ · Accepted solution]

Hi Dave,

you may want to know that Check Point has updated R80 Release Notes on 8th of June 2016 and added half a page HW recommendations section.

[Dave_Hoggan]

Hi Valrei,

Thanks for this.

My only thought is that they suggest a 4 core CPU with 8GB RAM for open servers, but also that a 2 core, 4GB RAM SMART-1 205 will work. There is effectively a doubling of resources between the two.

Our current experience is that the SMART-1 205 is struggling, even in modest deployments. 

Thanks,

Dave

[_Val_]

You are absolutely correct. My view on that is Check Point tries not to scare customers having low level Smart-1 appliances

[Bryan_Ofoegbu]

Great Feedback.

[#7]

Hi Valeri, Hi Dave,

I think there will be a difference between what will "run" and what is "fun". And a difference if you run it with Smart Event  or without. A Smart-1 205 might run fine as a policy server with R80. But probably not with Smart Event as well.

My experience tells me that a Smart-1 225 with HDD (Total 32 GB RAM) will definitely run and will provide a nice user experience for something like a 13800/15600/23600 cluster with NGTX.

But this is depending on how much load is actually on the gateways and which features are enabled.

Regards,

Tim