Forum Discussion
Mark_35110
Nimbostratus
NimbostratusSSL Offload performance in F5 LTM Virtual Edition
Can anyone tell me what the performance of SSL Offload is like using F5 LTM Virtual Edition. I am trying to save costs and not purchase hardware right now, and wondered what the limitations were in the Virtual Edition.
Surely, performance still scales based on VMware host hardware/Virtual Machine specs?
Any advice or links to white papers appreciated :)
Mark
nitassEmployee
not sure if this is what you are looking for; anyway, datasheet shows 4gbps maximum ssl throughput and 3550 maximum ssl tps (2k keys).
BIG-IP Virtual Editions DATASHEET
http://www.f5.com/pdf/products/big-ip-virtual-editions-datasheet.pdf
Mark_35110Thanks that's very useful. Does anyone have any real world experience to add to this?
nitass_89166Noctilucent
not sure if this is what you are looking for; anyway, datasheet shows 4gbps maximum ssl throughput and 3550 maximum ssl tps (2k keys).
BIG-IP Virtual Editions DATASHEET
http://www.f5.com/pdf/products/big-ip-virtual-editions-datasheet.pdf- Mark_35110Thanks that's very useful. Does anyone have any real world experience to add to this?
- Jessed12345Yes, performance still scales with the VM and hypervisor specs. That said, the SSL handshake is an expensive operation and you will only get so far without dedicated SSL hardware to offload that operation. Other than provisioning the maximum number of CPUs for the VE, you'll want to configure the SSL profile to permit as much session re-use as possible. In most cases the cipher doesn't have an enormous impact, but preferring faster ciphers can only help. The biggest performance improvement would come from using 1K keys over 2K keys, however there are obvious security implications with that approach.
- Mark_35110Thanks jesse. Can you elaborate on "...you'll want to configure the SSL profile to permit as much session re-use as possible..." please?
- nitassi think jesse means ssl session resumption. sol6767: Overview of the BIG-IP SSL session cache profile settings https://support.f5.com/kb/en-us/solutions/public/6000/700/sol6767.html
