Performance Pack

Introduction to Performance Pack

Performance Pack is a software acceleration product installed on Security Gateways. Performance Pack uses SecureXL technology and other innovative network acceleration techniques to deliver wire-speed performance for Security Gateways.

Performance Pack is supported on:

• SecurePlatform
  • To install SecureXL, run: sysconfig
  • To enable SecureXL, run: cpconfig
• Gaia
  • On Gaia, Performance Pack is automatically installed when you run the First Time Wizard.
  • To enable SecureXL, run: cpconfig

Supported Features

These security functions are enhanced by Performance Pack:

• Access control
• Encryption
• NAT
• Accounting and logging
• Connection/session rate
• General security checks
• IPS features
• CIFs resources
• ClusterXL High Availability and Load Sharing
• TCP Sequence Verification
• Dynamic VPN
• Anti Spoofing verifications
• Passive streaming
• Drop rate

Preparing the Performance Pack

For optimal performance, configure the BIOS and NICs for Performance Pack.

BIOS Settings

• If your BIOS supports CPU clock setting, make sure that the BIOS is set to the actual CPU speed.
• If you are running Performance Pack on a machine with Intel Xeon CPUs, it is recommended to disable Hyper-Threading.

Network Interface Cards

• If you are using a motherboard with multiple PCI or PCI-X buses, make sure that each Network Interface Card is installed in a slot connected to a different bus.
• If you are using more than two Network Interface Cards in a system with only two 64bit/66Mhz PCI buses, make sure that the least-used cards are installed in slots connected to the same bus.

For an updated list of certified Network Interface Cards, see Certified Network Interfaces.

Installing during a SecurePlatform Gateway Installation

During the Check Point SecurePlatform installation process, select the following products from the list of products to install:

• Security Gateway
• Performance Pack

Installing on SecurePlatform Gateway

Performance Pack can be installed on a Security Gateway on SecurePlatform.

1. Type sysconfig to enter the configuration menu.
2. Select Products Installation.
3. Follow the instructions until reaching the product selection screen.
4. Select Performance Pack.
5. Follow the instructions until finish.
6. Exit the configuration menu.
7. Reboot the gateway.

Installing on Installed SecurePlatform Gateway with HFA

If the SecurePlatform Security Gateway has a customer release, minor release, hotfix, or hotfix accumulator (HFA) installed on top of the main gateway version, use these steps.

1. Type sysconfig to enter the configuration menu.
2. Select Products Installation.
3. Follow the instructions until reaching the product selection screen.
4. Select Performance Pack.
5. Follow the instructions until finish.
6. Select Products Configuration.
7. Disable Check Point SecureXL.
8. Exit the configuration menu.
9. Reboot the gateway.
10. Upgrade the Performance Pack using SmartUpdate or from command line.

Upgrading with SmartUpdate

We recommend that you use SmartUpdate to upgrade Performance Pack.

To upgrade with SmartUpdate:

1. Select SmartUpdate from Check Point SmartConsole.
2. From the Packages menu, select Add > From File….
3. Select the HFA package and wait until the uploading finished.
4. From the Package Repository, select the Performance Pack package and drag it to the appropriate gateway.
5. Follow the instructions until finished.

Upgrading with the Command Line

If SmartUpdate is not an option, you can update with the command line.

1. Change to the directory where the upgrade file (.tgz) is located.
2. Run: tar –xzvf <filename>
3. Change to the CPppak directory.
4. Run: tar –xzvf <sim filename>
5. Run the sim executable.

Command Line

fwaccel

fwaccel [on|off|stat|stats|conns|templates]

fwaccel6

Example: fwaccel6 stat

Accelerator Status : on 

Accept Templates : enabled 

Accelerator Features : Accounting, NAT, Routing, HasClock, Templates, Synchronous, IdleDetection, Sequencing, TcpStateDetect, AutoExpire, DelayedNotif, TcpStateDetectV2, CPLS, WireMode, DropTemplates

Example: fwaccel6 templates

Source SPort Destination DPort PR Flags LCT DLY C2S i/f S2C i/f

--------------------------------------- -----

 --------------------------------------- ----- -- ------- ----

 --- --------- --------- 

9999:b:0:0:0:0:0:10 * 9999:b:0:0:0:0:0:20 10000 17 ....... 15 0 Lan5/Lan1 Lan1/Lan5

Example: fwaccel6 stats

Name Value Name Value 

-------------------- --------------- 

-------------------- --------------- 

conns created 11 conns deleted 7 

temporary conns 0 templates 1 

nat conns 0 accel packets 2 

accel bytes 96 F2F packets 39 

ESP enc pkts 0 ESP enc err 0 

ESP dec pkts 0 ESP dec err 0 

ESP other err 0 espudp enc pkts 0 

espudp enc err 0 espudp dec pkts 0 

espudp dec err 0 espudp other err 0 

AH enc pkts 0 AH enc err 0 

AH dec pkts 0 AH dec err 0 

AH other err 0 memory used 0 

free memory 0 acct update interval 3600 

current total conns 4 TCP violations 0 

conns from templates 0 TCP conns 0 

delayed TCP conns 0 non TCP conns 4 

delayed nonTCP conns 0 F2F conns 3 

F2F bytes 2848 crypt conns 0 

enc bytes 0 dec bytes 0 

partial conns 0 anticipated conns 0 

dropped packets 0 dropped bytes 0 

nat templates 0 port alloc templates 0 

conns from nat tmpl 0 port alloc conns 0 

port alloc f2f 0

fwaccel stats and fwaccel6 stats

The fwaccel stats and fwaccel6 stats commands show performance statistics. This information can help you understand traffic behavior and help investigate performance issues.

cpconfig

Check Point products are configured using the cpconfig utility. This utility shows the configuration options of the installed configuration and products. You can use cpconfig to enable or disable Performance Pack. When you select an acceleration setting, the setting remains configured until you change it.

For an alternative method to enable or disable acceleration, see fwaccel.

Run: cpconfig

A menu shows Enable/Disable Check Point SecureXL.

sim affinity

sim affinity [-a|-s|-l]

proc entries

cat /proc/ppk/[conf|ifs|statistics|drop statistics]

Performance Tuning and Measurement

Setting the Maximum Concurrent Connections

To set the desired number of maximum concurrent connections:

1. Open SmartDashboard's Gateway Object Properties window.
2. Open the Capacity Optimization tab. Make sure that Calculate connections hash table size and memory pool is set to Automatically.
3. Set the desired amount of concurrent connections in the Maximum Concurrent Connections field.

Increasing the Number of Concurrent Connections

You can increase the actual number of concurrent connections by reducing the timeout of TCP and UDP sessions:

• TCP end timeout determines the amount of time a TCP connection will stay in the Firewall connection table after a TCP session has ended.
• UDP virtual session timeout determines the amount of time a UDP connection will stay in the Firewall connection table after the last UDP packet was seen by the gateway.

By reducing the above values, the capacity of actual TCP and UDP connections is increased.

SecureXL Templates

Verify that templates are not disabled using the fwaccel stat command.

For further information regarding SecureXL Templates, see sk32578.

SecureXL NAT templates

Using SecureXL Templates for NAT traffic lets you achieve a high session rate for NAT traffic. SecureXL NAT Templates are supported in cluster in High Availability, VRRP, and Load Sharing modes.

For more, see: sk71200.

Delayed Notification

In the ClusterXL configuration, the Delayed Notification feature is disabled by default. Enabling this feature improves performance (at the cost of connections' redundancy, which can be tuned using delayed notifications expiration timeout).

The fwaccel stats command indicates the number of delayed connections.

The fwaccel templates command indicates the delayed time for each template under the DLY entry.

Connection Templates

Connection templates are generated from active connections according to the policy rules. The connection template feature accelerates the speed at which a connection is established by matching a new connection to a set of attributes. When a new connection matches the template, connections are established without performing a rule match and therefore are accelerated. Connection templates are generated from active connections according to policy rules. Currently, connection template acceleration is performed only on connections with the same destination port.

Examples:

• A connection from 10.0.0.1/2000 to 11.0.0.1/80 — established through Firewall and then accelerated.
• A connection from 10.0.0.1/2001 to 11.0.0.1/80 — fully accelerated (including connection establishment).
• A connection from 10.0.0.1/8000 to 11.0.0.1/80 — fully accelerated (including connection establishment).

HTTP GET requests to specific server will be accelerated since the connection has the same source IP address.

Restrictions

In general, Connections Templates will be created only for plain UDP or TCP connections. The following restrictions apply for Connection Template generation:

Global restrictions:

• SYN Defender — Connection Templates for TCP connections will not be created
• VPN connections
• Complex connections (H323, FTP, SQL)
• NetQuotas
• ISN Spoofing

If the Rule Base contains a rule regarding one of the following components, the Connection Templates will be disabled for connections matching this rule, and for all of the following rules:

• Security Server connections.
• Time objects in the rules.
• Dynamic Objects and/or Domain Objects.
• Services of type "other" with a match expression.
• User/Client/Session Authentication actions.
• Services of type RPC/DCERPC/DCOM.

When installing a policy containing restricted rules, you will receive console messages indicating that Connection Templates will not be created due to the rules that have been defined. The warnings should be used as a recommendation that will assist you to fine-tune your policy in order to optimize performance.

Testing

To verify that connection templates are enabled, use the fwaccel stat command. To verify that connection templates are generated, use fwaccel templates. This should be done while traffic is running, in order to obtain a list of currently defined templates.

Delayed Synchronization

The synchronization mechanism guarantees High Availability. In a cluster configuration, if one cluster member fails, the other recognizes the connection failure and takes over, so the user does not experience any connectivity issue. However, there is an overhead per synchronized operation, which can occasionally cause a system slow-down when there are short sessions.

Delayed synchronization is a mechanism based upon the duration of the connection, with the duration itself used to determine whether or not to perform synchronization. A time range can be defined per service. The time range indicates that connections terminated before a specified expiration time will not be synchronized. As a result, synchronized traffic is reduced and overall performance increases. Delayed Synchronization is performed only for connections matching a connection template.

Currently, delayed synchronization is allowed only for services of type HTTP or None. In order to configure delayed synchronization, proceed as follows:

1. In SmartDashboard, right click on the Service tab.
2. Either edit an existing service or click New and select TCP. The TCP service properties window is shown.
3. After defining TCP parameters, click Advanced in the TCP service properties window. The Advanced TCP Service Properties window is shown.
4. Select the HTTP or None protocol from the Protocol Type list.
5. Check Start synchronizing.
6. Define the duration value Seconds after connection initiation. The duration value is specified in seconds.

Multi-Core Systems

Running Performance Pack on multi-core systems may require more advanced configurations to account for core affinity and IRQ behavior. For more information, see sk33250.

Performance Measurement

There are various ways to monitor and measure the performance of a Security Gateway.

TCP State and Benchmarking

Certain testing applications (SmartBits or Chariot) generate invalid TCP sequences. The Security Gateway's TCP state check detects these faulty sequences, and drops the packets. As a result, the benchmark fails. Since these TCP sequences are invalid, they may affect overall Firewall performance.

To disable this type of TCP state check, perform the following operations in SmartDashboard:

1. In the IPS tab, select Protections > By Protocol > Network Security > TCP > Sequence Verifier.
2. Select the profile assigned to your gateway and click Edit.
3. In the Action field, select Inactive.
4. Click OK to close the Protections Settings window.
5. Click OK to close the Protections Details window.
6. Click Install Policy to apply the changes.

Non-accelerated traffic analysis

Use the fwaccel stats command to verify the amount of non-accelerated traffic compared to accelerated traffic.

Use the sim dbg + f2f command to understand the possible reasons for the non-accelerated traffic.

Performance Troubleshooting

Additional CLI commands, such as ethtool, are available to monitor the performance of the gateway. For a list of these commands and explanation of their usage, see sk33781.