Juniper vSRX versus cSRX
Currently most common applications such as Redis, Ngnix, Mongo, MySQL, WordPress, Jenkins , Kibana, and Perl have been containerized and are offered publicly at https://hub.docker.com allowing developers to quickly build and test their applications.
There are lots of available tests that compare performance and scaling for any given application while running in containers versus VM. The comparisons all dwell on the benefits of running your application in containers, but what about network function virtualizations (NFV) such as firewall, NAT, routing, and more?
When it comes to VM-based NFV, most network vendors already implement a virtualized flavor of the hardware equipment that could be run on the hypervisor of a standard x86 hardware. Built on Junos, vSRX is a Juniper Networks SRX Series Services Gateway in a virtualized form factor that delivers networking and security features similar to those available for the physical SRX just as it does for the containerized based NFV. It’s the new trend. Juniper cSRX is the industry’s first containerized firewall offering a compact footprint with a high-density firewall for virtualized and cloud environments. Table 1 lists a comparison between vSRX and cSRX in which you can see the idea of the cSRX being a lightweight NFV.
Table 1: vSRX versus cSRX
vSRX | cSRX | |
Use Cases | Integrated routing, security, NAT, VPN, High Performance | L4-L7 Security, Low Footprint |
Memory Requirement | 4GB Minimum | In MBs |
NAT | Yes | Yes |
IPSec VPN | Yes | No |
Boot-up Time | ~minutes | <1second |
Image size | In GBs | In MBs |
Using micro services techniques, the application can be split into smaller services with each part (a container in this case) doing a specific job.