vCMP on Viprion 2400

We are actually consolidating several platforms (6400/3900/1500) onto the VIPRION C2400 platform right now using vCMP. At first, I encountered several problems - mostly not due to vCMP specific problems but because of general v11 issues. If you haven't made the jump to v11 on any boxes yet, be prepared for some pretty drastic changes - especially in the HA department (with the introduction of traffic/device group/sync groups/etc).

 

 

It would appear that with 4 vCMP guests virtualized on a single B2100 blade, each vCMP guest should have the equivalent processing power of somewhere in between a single 6900 and 8950. The B2100's really excel in L4, and can push ~40gbps of L4. This is actually what the BIG-IP 11000 is spec'd at. Real world performance - I can't yet tell, because I only have a minimal amount of traffic on the VIPRION platform at this time.

 

 

Regarding SSL TPS licensing. Each core on the B2100 blade has 500TPS included with the base license. All of this stated capacity (2000 SSL TPS/blade) is available to any and all vCMP guests. Any guest that is not currently using any SSL will not contend for any SSL resources. If one guest needs 2000 TPS, and the others aren't using any, one guest will get the entire 2000 TPS (even if that guest is using one blade). This is how it was explained to me by my SE.

 

 

My beef with vCMP at this time is resource allocation. There is a 1:1 ratio of CPU:vCMP guest, meaning that if I have a B2100 that only has 3 vCMP guests, I am basically wasting an entire CPU core in the B2100. I can not allocate 2 CPU cores to 1 vCMP guest, therefore I am wasting a processing core. The only way to provide more processing power for a vCMP guest is to add another blade in to the chassis. Once you do this, you only then have the option to make a vCMP guest span "one" or "multiple" blades. Not very flexible, in my opinion.

 

 

Josh