For more information regarding the security incident at F5, the actions we are taking to address it, and our ongoing efforts to protect our customers, click here.

Forum Discussion

CX_280703's avatar
CX_280703
Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
Dec 08, 2016
Solved

APM Policy Size Recomandations and Spiking CPU

I just wanted to ask a couple of quick questions around an APM Access Policy.   Are there maximum size recommendations for an access policy? how big can you go before you would start seeing perfor...
BIG-IP
BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM)
security
  • Lucas_Thompson_'s avatar
    Lucas_Thompson_
    Dec 08, 2016

    Copy/Export/Import operations operate outside of the normal management (gui/mcpd) process. I'd suggest to open a support ticket. Management ops shouldn't cause any kind of service disruption unless you're on an already oversubscribed virtual host.

     

CX_280703's avatar
CX_280703
Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
Jan 16, 2017

For those interested, the following was received from Support:

 

K15003: Data plane and control plane tasks use separate logical cores when the BIG-IP system CPU uses Hyper-Threading Technology

 

The even-numbered hyper-threads (0, 2, 4, etc.) are dedicated to TMM as a high-priority process to service data plane tasks. The odd-numbered hyper-threads (1, 3, 5, etc.) process control plane tasks at a normal priority level

 

Per K15003, odd-numbered cores are dedicated to control plane tasks while even-numbered cores are dedicated for data plane (TMM). Therefore, you are likely not noticing any sort of traffic impact (as that's handled by TMM and is part of the data plane) but seeing high CPU usage due to other control plane processes on core 1 and 3.

 

Also

 

To copy a certain policy in the same unit with different name means to add huge configuration (depend on how complicate), it would impact the system in a certain degree.

 

We would recommend you to run "export" option rather than "copy". Export the policy base on existing policy configuration this will lighten the system performance and resource usage.

 

The above recommendations significantly reduced the CPU usage and have sped up our whole process.