As far as memory and CPU core allocations for R80.10 vs. R80.20.M1 SMS in regards to management performance, I've reviewed the $CPDIR/conf/CpSetupInfo_resourceProfiles.conf file on both versions and the updates appear to be relatively minor. This file is used to set Java heap sizes and other performance-related variables at SMS boot time based on the amount of cores/memory detected. This file and its associated components was first discussed in my post here:
https://community.checkpoint.com/thread/7331-mangement-server-r8010-slowness?commentID=16840#comment...
So after looking over everything in R80.20.M1 I'll restate my personal SMS performance recommendations. Note that this is just for an SMS, Provider-1/MDSM is another ball of wax entirely.
Cores - In my experience, up to 8 cores will provide a quite noticeable performance improvement as each core is added and is strongly recommended; more cores beyond 8 seems to help a bit but will probably not make a big difference in most situations. Digging deeper it appears that having more than 12 cores does not further tweak any performance-related settings via CpSetupInfo_resourceProfiles.conf, so while adding more cores beyond 8 may help a little bit (and this definitely tracks with my real-world experience), going beyond 12 is probably not worthwhile.
Memory - I'd strongly recommend at least 16GB minimum, more will certainly help especially if there is strong contention for the disk path being used by a SMS VM or with larger policy configurations. As memory is added Java heap sizes and such for the various management processes will be automatically scaled up, but this scaling tops out above 35.8GB of RAM. So increasing memory substantially beyond 35.8GB of RAM will not allocate any extra heap resources to Java, but certainly may help with the buffering/caching of disk operations performed by Gaia/Linux.
Hyperthreading - On bare-metal SMS R80/R80.10 open hardware there was a general recommendation to leave SMT/Hyperthreading off due to the possibility of exacerbating a bottleneck in the 2.6.18 disk I/O driver. This was supposed to be rectified by use of the new 3.10 kernel and its corresponding updated driver, but if anyone with Check Point would like to update this unofficial recommendation specifically for R80.20.M1, I'm all ears.
Note again that the preceding recommendations are just for an SMS, Provider-1/MDSM is another ball of wax entirely and adding more core/memory resources beyond that stated above is quite likely to enhance Provider-1/MDSM management performance.
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