Requirements for vSRX on VMware
Software Specifications
Table 1 lists the system software requirement specifications when deploying vSRX on VMware. The table outlines the Junos OS release in which a particular software specification for deploying vSRX on VMware was introduced. You must need to download a specific Junos OS release to take advantage of certain features.
Table 1: Specifications for vSRX and vSRX 3.0 on VMware
Component | Specification | Junos OS Release Introduced |
---|---|---|
Hypervisor support | VMware ESXi 5.1, 5.5, or 6.0 | Junos OS Release 15.1X49-D15 and Junos OS Release 17.3R1 |
VMware ESXi 5.5, 6.0, 6.5 | Junos OS Release 17.4R1, 18.1R1, 18.2R1, 18.3R1 | |
VMware ESXi 6.5 | Junos OS Release 18.4R1 | |
VMware ESXi 6.5 (For vSRX 3.0 only) | Junos OS Release 19.3R1 | |
Memory | 4 GB | Junos OS Release 15.1X49-D15 and Junos OS Release 17.3R1 |
8GB | Junos OS Release 15.1X49-D70 and Junos OS Release 17.3R1 | |
16 GB | Junos OS Release 18.4R1 | |
32 GB | Junos OS Release 18.4R1 | |
Disk space | 16 GB (IDE or SCSI drives) | Junos OS Release 15.1X49-D15 and Junos OS Release 17.3R1 |
vCPUs | 2 vCPUs | Junos OS Release 15.1X49-D15 and Junos OS Release 17.3R1 |
5 vCPUs | Junos OS Release 15.1X49-D70 and Junos OS Release 17.3R1 | |
9 vCPUs | Junos OS Release 18.4R1 | |
17 vCPUs | Junos OS Release 18.4R1 | |
vNICs | Up to 10 vNICs
| Junos OS Release 15.1X49-D15 and Junos OS Release 17.3R1 |
Starting in Junos OS Release 18.4R1:
| Junos OS Release 18.4R1 | |
Starting in Junos OS Release 19.4R1, DPDK version 18.11 is supported on vSRX. With this feature the Mellanox Connect Network Interface Card (NIC) on vSRX now supports OSPF Multicast and VLANs. | Junos OS Release 19.4R1 |
Table 2 lists the specifications on the vSRX 3.0 virtual machine (VM).
Table 2: Specifications for vSRX 3.0 on VMware
vCPU | vRAM | DPDK | Hugepage | vNICs | vDisk | Junos OS Release Introduced |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2 | 4G | 17.05 | 2G | 2-10 | 20G | Junos OS Release 18.2R1 |
5 | 8G | 17.05 | 6G | 2–10 vSRX on VMWare supports VMXNET3 through DPDK and PMD, and SR-IOV (82599). A maximum number of eight interfaces are supported. DPDK uses HugePage for improved performance. | 20G | Junos OS Release 18.4R1 |
Hardware Specifications
Table 3 lists the hardware specifications for the host machine that runs the vSRX VM.
Table 3: Hardware Specifications for the Host Machine
Component | Specification |
---|---|
Host processor type | Intel x86_64 multicore CPU Note: DPDK requires Intel Virtualization VT-x/VT-d support in the CPU. See About Intel Virtualization Technology. |
Virtual network adapter | VMXNet3 device or VMware Virtual NIC Note: Virtual Machine Communication Interface (VMCI) communication channel is internal to the ESXi hypervisor and the vSRX VM. |
Physical NIC support on vSRX 3.0 | Support SR-IOV on X710/XL710 vSRX3.0 SR-IOV HA on I40E ( X710,X740,X722 and so on) are not supported on VMware. Mellanox NIC (any ConnectX) cards are not support on VMWare. |
Best Practices for Improving vSRX Performance
Review the following practices to improve vSRX performance.
NUMA Nodes
The x86 server architecture consists of multiple sockets and multiple cores within a socket. Each socket also has memory that is used to store packets during I/O transfers from the NIC to the host. To efficiently read packets from memory, guest applications and associated peripherals (such as the NIC) should reside within a single socket. A penalty is associated with spanning CPU sockets for memory accesses, which might result in nondeterministic performance. For vSRX, we recommend that all vCPUs for the vSRX VM are in the same physical non-uniform memory access (NUMA) node for optimal performance.
The Packet Forwarding Engine (PFE) on the vSRX will become unresponsive if the NUMA nodes topology is configured in the hypervisor to spread the instance’s vCPUs across multiple host NUMA nodes. vSRX requires that you ensure that all vCPUs reside on the same NUMA node.
We recommend that you bind the vSRX instance with a specific NUMA node by setting NUMA node affinity. NUMA node affinity constrains the vSRX VM resource scheduling to only the specified NUMA node.
PCI NIC-to-VM Mapping
If the node on which vSRX is running is different from the node to which the Intel PCI NIC is connected, then packets will have to traverse an additional hop in the QPI link, and this will reduce overall throughput. Use the esxtop command to view information about relative physical NIC locations. On some servers where this information is not available, refer to the hardware documentation for the slot-to-NUMA node topology.
Interface Mapping for vSRX on VMware
Each network adapter defined for a vSRX is mapped to a specific interface, depending on whether the vSRX instance is a standalone VM or one of a cluster pair for high availability. The interface names and mappings in vSRX are shown in Table 4 and Table 5.
Note the following:
In standalone mode:
fxp0 is the out-of-band management interface.
ge-0/0/0 is the first traffic (revenue) interface.
In cluster mode:
fxp0 is the out-of-band management interface.
em0 is the cluster control link for both nodes.
Any of the traffic interfaces can be specified as the fabric links, such as ge-0/0/0 for fab0 on node 0 and ge-7/0/0 for fab1 on node 1.
Table 4 shows the interface names and mappings for a standalone vSRX VM.
Table 4: Interface Names for a Standalone vSRX VM
Network | Interface Name in Junos OS |
---|---|
1 | fxp0 |
2 | ge-0/0/0 |
3 | ge-0/0/1 |
4 | ge-0/0/2 |
5 | ge-0/0/3 |
6 | ge-0/0/4 |
7 | ge-0/0/5 |
8 | ge-0/0/6 |
Table 5 shows the interface names and mappings for a pair of vSRX VMs in a cluster (node 0 and node 1).
Table 5: Interface Names for a vSRX Cluster Pair
Network | Interface Name in Junos OS |
---|---|
1 | fxp0 (node 0 and 1) |
2 | em0 (node 0 and 1) |
3 | ge-0/0/0 (node 0) |
4 | ge-0/0/1 (node 0) |
5 | ge-0/0/2 (node 0) |
6 | ge-0/0/3 (node 0) |
7 | ge-0/0/4 (node 0) |
8 | ge-0/0/5 (node 0) |
vSRX Default Settings on VMware
vSRX requires the following basic configuration settings:
Interfaces must be assigned IP addresses.
Interfaces must be bound to zones.
Policies must be configured between zones to permit or deny traffic.
For the management interface, fxp0, VMware uses the VMXNET 3 vNIC and requires promiscuous mode on the vSwitch.
Table 6 lists the factory default settings for the vSRX security policies.
Table 6: Factory Default Settings for Security Policies
Source Zone | Destination Zone | Policy Action |
---|---|---|
trust | untrust | permit |
trust | trust | permit |
untrust | trust | deny |