Performance Tuning

In This Section: Overview Changing IPS Protection Scope Configuring Web Server Protections Excluding Protections Gradually Activating Protections Tuning Performance Impact Optimizing the Rule Base Monitoring Security Gateway Performance

Overview

When a gateway CPU consistently runs at a high load, it is possible that the active profile is too heavy for the hardware. We recommend that you change the profile and IPS settings to optimize IPS for the network.

Use SNMP or SmartView Monitor to monitor CPU load and memory usage for a few days. Make sure that the gateway meets these hardware statistics to continue to deploy the active profile:

• CPU utilization - average utilization is lower than 30% across cores
• CPU Peaks - short interval peaks (1 - 2 minutes) lower than 50% utilization
• Free RAM - at least 20%

If the gateway does not meet the previous requirements:

• Upgrade to an appliance or server with more powerful hardware
• Run fewer IPS protections in the network

The following sections show different methods to reduce IPS protections and improve gateway performance.

Note - The performance impact of a protection is almost the same for Prevent and Detect modes. Prevent mode sometimes drops traffic and does not inspect it.