NSXbytes0
A question came up today around throughput numbers for an NSX Edge Services Gateway and that jogged my memory back to a previous blog post where I compared features and performance metrics between vShield Edges and NSX Edges. In the original post I had left out some key metrics, specifically around firewall and load balance throughput so thought it was time for an update. Thanks to a couple of people in the vExpert NSX Slack Channel I was able to fill some gaps and update the tables below.

A reminder that VMware has announced the End of Availability (“EOA”) of the VMware vCloud Networking and Security 5.5.x that kicked in on the September  of 19, 2016 and that vCloud Director 8.10 does not support vShield Edges anymore…hence why I have removed the VSE from the tables.

As a refresher…what is an Edge device?

The Edge Services Gateway (NSX-v) connects isolated, stub networks to shared (uplink) networks by providing common gateway services such as DHCP, VPN, NAT, dynamic routing, and Load Balancing. Common deployments of Edges include in the DMZ, VPN Extranets, and multi-tenant Cloud environments where the Edge creates virtual boundaries for each tenant.

Below is a list of services provided by the NSX Edge.

Service Description
Firewall Supported rules include IP 5-tuple configuration with IP and port ranges for stateful inspection for all protocols
NAT Separate controls for Source and Destination IP addresses, as well as port translation
DHCP Configuration of IP pools, gateways, DNS servers, and search domains
Site to Site VPN Uses standardized IPsec protocol settings to interoperate with all major VPN vendors
SSL VPN SSL VPN-Plus enables remote users to connect securely to private networks behind a NSX Edge gateway
Load Balancing Simple and dynamically configurable virtual IP addresses and server groups
High Availability High availability ensures an active NSX Edge on the network in case the primary NSX Edge virtual machine is unavailable
Syslog Syslog export for all services to remote servers
L2 VPN Provides the ability to stretch your L2 network.
Dynamic Routing Provides the necessary forwarding information between layer 2 broadcast domains, thereby allowing you to decrease layer 2 broadcast domains and improve network efficiency and scale. Provides North-South connectivity, thereby enabling tenants to access public networks.

Below is a table that shows the different sizes of each edge appliance and what (if any) impact that has to the performance of each service. As a disclaimer the below numbers have been cherry picked from different sources and are subject to change…I’ll keep them as up to date as possible.

NSX Edge (Compact) NSX Edge (Large) NSX Edge (Quad-Large) NSX Edge (X-Large)
vCPU 1 2 4 6
Memory 512MB 1GB 1GB 8GB
Disk 512MB 512MB 512MB 4.5GB
Interfaces 10 10 10 10
Sub Interfaces (Trunk) 200 200 200 200
NAT Rules 2000 2000 2000 2000
FW Rules 2000 2000 2000 2000
FW Performance 3Gbps 9.7Gbps 9.7Gbps 9.7Gbps
DHCP Pools 25 25 25 25
Static Routes 2048 2048 2048 2048
LB Pools 64 64 64 64
LB Virtual Servers 64 64 64 64
LB Server / Pool 32 32 32 32
IPSec Tunnels 512 1600 4096 6000
SSLVPN Tunnels 50 100 100 1000
Concurrent Sessions 64,000 1,000,000 1,000,000 1,000,000
Sessions/Second 8,000 50,000 50,000 50,000
LB Throughput L7 Proxy) 2.2Gbps 2.2Gbps 3Gbps
LB Throughput L4 Mode) 6Gbps 6Gbps 6Gbps
LB Connections/s (L7 Proxy) 46,000 50,000 50,000
LB Concurrent Connections (L7 Proxy) 8,000 60,000 60,000
LB Connections/s (L4 Mode) 50,000 50,000 50,000
LB Concurrent Connections (L4 Mode) 600,000 1,000,000 1,000,000
BGP Routes 20,000 50,000 250,000 250,000
BGP Neighbors 10 20 50 50
BGP Routes Redistributed No Limit No Limit No Limit No Limit
OSPF Routes 20,000 50,000 100,000 100,000
OSPF Adjacencies 10 20 40 40
OSPF Routes Redistributed 2000 5000 20,000 20,000
Total Routes 20,000 50,000 250,000 250,000

Of interest from the above table it doesn’t list any Load Balancing performance number for the NSX Compact Edge…take that to mean that if you want to do any sort of load balancing you will need NSX Large and above. To finish up, below is a table describing each NSX Edge size use case.

Use Case
NSX Edge (Compact) Small Deployment, POCs and single service use
NSX Edge (Large) Small/Medium DC or mult-tenant
NSX Edge (Quad-Large) High Throughput ECMP or High Performance Firewall
NSX Edge (X-Large) L7 Load Balancing, Dedicated Core

References:

https://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/products/nsx/vmw-nsx-network-virtualization-design-guide.pdf

https://pubs.vmware.com/NSX-6/index.jsp#com.vmware.nsx.admin.doc/GUID-3F96DECE-33FB-43EE-88D7-124A730830A4.html

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2042799