How to spec hardware for VE?

Dear all, this could an annoying question we may face selling Virtual Editions. I saw someone asked this question before but no one answered: https://devcentral.f5.com/questions/waf-throughput-sizing

 

For example, if the apps team says: "I need 2000 SSL TPS, and expect 100,000 concurrent L4 connections, and I am running in a 1Gbps network environment because my switches have those interface ports."

 

The question is, what hardware specs maintain 2000 SSL TPS and 100,000 concurrent L4 connections? In theory, CPU affects SSL performance while memory might affect concurrent connections since you need memory to maintain connection tables, etc.

 

But in practice, what is the appropriate hardware spec? How would you have size it if you have specific performance metrics to meet?

 

Looking at VE datasheet, we were given some range of performance metrics. (https://www.f5.com/pdf/products/big-ip-virtual-editions-datasheet.pdf)

 

But it ranges for example, from 900 SSL RSA TPS (2K Keys) to 3,800 and the equipment tested for maximum performance is with Dell PowerEdge R620 with Intel Xeon CPU E5-2670 0 @ 2.6GHz and Intel 82599EB 10-Gigabit SFP+ NIC—configured for PCI pass-through with support for SR-IOV.

 

How about using the hardware models as a gauge for VE since hardware models also state their hardware specs and related performance metrics? However, an old model of 5000 series runs Intel Xeon E3 Quad-Core 3.3Ghz chip by "tmsh show /sys hardware". I believe TMOS is very tightly-integrated with the hardware so perhaps a seemingly lower "Xeon" can run 5000 series?