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Mark_35110
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Dec 19, 2014

SSL 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

 

7 Replies

    • Mark_35110's avatar
      Mark_35110
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      Thanks that's very useful. Does anyone have any real world experience to add to this?
    • Mark_35110's avatar
      Mark_35110
      Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
      Thanks that's very useful. Does anyone have any real world experience to add to this?
  • Yes, 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.
  • Thanks jesse. Can you elaborate on "...you'll want to configure the SSL profile to permit as much session re-use as possible..." please?
  • i 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