Check Point Appliance Hardware Spec.

[Longson_Ho1]

Hi,

I would like to know the spec. of Checkpoint Appliance Hardware, as one of my customers would use virtual edition of checkpoint and sizing its own server spec.

I cannot find the CPU details used in different appliance model in official KB.
While Check Point Appliance Hardware (Lachmann List, Update February 28st 2017) – Lying Weasel Factor  seems provide me the answer.

Is it good to go to have the CP Virtual GW installed on open server with similar spec.?
Eg. By using CP sizing tools, it is projected to use CP5100 / CP5200. So I could suggest customer to have their own open server with similar spec. of CP5100/5200?

Thanks.

[PhoneBoy]

Check Point does not publish the exact hardware specs of their appliances.

That said, there are unofficial sources of this information, such as what you linked to above.

Open Servers and Virtual Machines have different performance characteristics than Check Point appliances, even when the exact same hardware is used in both cases.

The Hypervisor (for VMs) and hardware drivers in question will play a huge role in the overall performance.

You can try to get a Open Server appliance with similar specs to a 5100/5200, but:

1. Performance on Open Servers is not tested nor guaranteed.

2. For the server to be supported, it must be on the Hardware Compatibility List.

That said, using similar hardware usually provides similar results. 

For VMs, you are not going to get the same performance as you would get on equivalently sized bare metal, particularly as you start increasing the core count.

I would work with your Check Point SE on sizing VMs.

[Maarten_Sjouw]

On top of the Reasons Dameon has given there is also a pricing and maintenance issue, purchasing the appliances ro purchasing a server and a license to run on that hardware, will on a 3 year contract set you back further that with the Appliance, is what we found.

Maybe in the higher end this will not be so, we did not really check the comparison for the 80K appliances against a server with a big enough core count.

Other issue we see with the combination of a open server with a separate license on a remote location, is that supporting this from remote, with people on site, who don't know anything about hardware and servers, is a real challenge, I can tell you from experience. Having to deal with 1 vendor in such a case is a lot easier then.

[edcastillo5]

Hi,

Somebody have an update of this info with new family models?