Best CPU allocation for VM-100

[RichardThornton]

Hi,

Say I have a KVM VM-100 (using SR-IOV) that I want to push 100Mbps of internet traffic through it, say you have 8 physical cores and for this VM-100 you choose to allocate 2400Mhz to it's VM, is it best to reserve:

2 cores at 1200Mhz

3 cores at 800Mhz

4 cores at 600Mhz

Or just setup X cores with no reservation and let the hypervisor adjust based on the load on the CPU from other VMs.

The aim is to give a consistent performance to the VM-100 and to limit any additional latency caused by a busy CPU.

So are cores more important than Mhz, I was thinking that because you probably have significant latency caused by AppID on virtual hardware, more cores might allow more AppID detections to take place?

Cheers

Richard

[hshah]

Hi Richard,

Following thread will be useful. 8 cores should be good.

Re: PAN VM series throughput

What I recommend is "more is better".

Let me know if you have more specific query.

Regards,

Hardik Shah

[RichardThornton]

Hardik,

Have you tested it, the thread talks about 10Gbps, I am looking for less than 100Mbps?

Cheers

Richard

[hshah]

Hi Richard,

100 MBps will work with default settings of any VM deployment, I have configured 100s of VMs, but never did stress testing.

I would suggest to go with minimum default values, if you observe any issue with throughput than add more hardware.

Regards,

Hardik Shah

[RichardThornton]

Thanks, I don't plan to add hardware later, I am basically looking for information on cores versus Mhz for low throughput (100Mb/sec) / high application count (internet gateway).