Cisco CSP 2100 is an NFV platform based on Intel x86 and the KVM hypervisor. The Controller and Service Engines can be deployed on Cisco CSP 2100. The following sections provide sizing guidelines for common deployment scenarios. One of the CSP 2100’s n vCPUs is reserved for CSP software. The rest (n-1) are available for deploying Avi Load Balancer.
Deploying Service Engines on Cisco CSP 2100
Avi Load Balancer Service Engines (SEs) are deployed as virtual machines (VMs) on Cisco CSP 2100. The SEs can be as small as a 1-vCPU VM. The performance of the SEs is dependent on the number of vCPUs per SE VM (for throughput and SSL TPS) and memory (for concurrent connections). For optimal performance, SE VMs must be deployed on Cisco CSP 2100 with SRIOV enabled.
Avi Load Balancer SE Performance on Cisco CSP 2100
The following table outlines SE performance on Cisco CSP 2100, with Intel v3 [email protected] GHz, hyper-threading disabled, and a 10-Gbps NIC with SRIOV enabled.
L4 Performance |
L7 Performance |
|||
|---|---|---|---|---|
SE VM Size |
CPS |
Throughput |
RPS |
Throughput |
2-vCPU, 4 GB |
35,000 |
7 Gbps |
75,000 |
5 Gbps |
L7 SSL Performance |
|||
|---|---|---|---|
SE VM Size |
Throughput |
TPS (ECC) |
TPS (RSA 2K) |
2-vCPU, 4 GB |
2.4 Gbps |
4,000 |
1,600 |
In general, the SSL/TLS performance (both throughput and TPS) scales linearly with number of vCPUs. For instance, 4-vCPU SE would be 2x the performance listed in table 1.
SSL/TLS performance on Intel v4 CPU is 20%-30% higher than SSL/TLS performance Intel v3 CPU (at the same CPU clock speed).
In addition to the SEs, the Controller also can be deployed (as a VM) on Cisco CSP 2100. The Controller VM sizing is based on the system scale.
Depending on the network design, the Controller Cluster can be deployed on dedicated Cisco CSP 2100s, or can share Cisco CSP 2100s with SEs.
Recommended Cisco CSP 2100 Specifications
The following are recommended Cisco CSP 2100 specifications for various deployment scenarios, and applies to either CSP 2100 X1 or X2 models:
Cisco CSP 2100 Sizing Recommendations |
|||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Scale |
Avi Load Balancer |
CSP 2100 CPU |
Memory |
Storage |
NICs |
Low |
19 Gbps SSL40k SSL TPS |
2.40 GHz E5-264010 cores / socket(Total 20 cores) |
128 GB |
4x 480 GB SSD |
2x dual-port 10G NICs(total 4x 10G ports) |
Medium |
27 Gbps SSL60K SSL TPS |
2.60 GHz E5-269014 cores / socket(total 28 cores) |
128 GB |
4x 480 GB SSD |
2x dual-port 10G NICs(total 4x 10G ports) |
High |
40 Gbps SSL100k SSL TPS |
2.20 GHz E5-269922 cores / socket(total 44 cores) |
256 GB |
8x 480 GB SSD |
4x dual-port 10G NICs(total 8x 10G ports) |
Maximum SE performance assumes all available vCPUs on the CSP 2100 are used forAvi Load Balancer SEs. If the Controller is deployed on the same CSP 2100, the maximum SE performance depends on the total number of vCPUs available for the SEs.
This configuration is recommended when Cisco CSP 2100 is used to deploy multiple NFV solutions, for instance, virtual ASA.
Creating Logical interfaces on Service Engine
The following table shows the logical interfaces that can be created on an SE:
Logical Interface |
Limit |
|---|---|
Maximum number of vNICs attached to Avi Load Balancer's SE VNF |
23 (out of which vNIC0 would be used for Avi Load Balancer SE management) |
Maximum number of VLANs on Avi Load Balancer SE |
200 |
Maximum number of VLANs per SRIOV passthrough interface |
64 |
