PA-2050 - what are the aho_sw_fpga_unavailable and dfa_sw_fpga_not_loaded counters all about?

[Smi12]

Hello

I'm trying to find out what the following two counters are all about and if our rate/count for these counters are anything to worry about regarding Data plane performance issues with our PA2050 Active-Active platform. 

Name	Category	Severity	Aspect	Value	Rate
aho_sw_fpga_unavailable	aho	warn	pktproc	29184581	949
dfa_sw_fpga_not_loaded	dfa	warn	offload	18083540	542

Any info would be greatly appreciated. 

[kprakash]

Good Morning,

Warning level indicates a non-error event, in most cases no immediate action is required but it may be beneficial to monitor.

The AHO is used for threat signature pattern matching, and the DFA is used in App-ID signatures and decoder token matches.  If signatures are changed, we will mark the FPGA as unavailable, load the new signatures into the FPGA, then unmark it.

The aho_sw_fpga_unavailable and the dfa_sw_fpga_not_loaded counters are something that we shouldnt worry much about and they seen when signatures are updated,  and the PANFW marks the FPGAs as unavailable during the loading process. Once the new signatures have been loaded, the FPGA will be marked available again.

The best way to check if the dataplanes are being overloaded are by looking at the below commands,

>show running resource-monitor

>show session info

Where the first command gives a snapshot of the percentage of CPU being used per DP, during a particular time.

The second command shows the total number of sessions active and throughput at that time.

BR,

Karthik RP