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Requirements for vSRX Virtual Firewall on VMware

Software Specifications

#id-requirements-for-vsrx-on-vmware__software-req lists the system software requirement specifications when deploying vSRX Virtual Firewall on VMware. The table outlines the Junos OS release in which a particular software specification for deploying vSRX Virtual Firewall on VMware was introduced. You must need to download a specific Junos OS release to take advantage of certain features.

Table 1: Feature Support on vSRX Virtual Firewall
Features Specification Junos OS Release Introduced
vCPUs/Memory

2 vCPUs / 4 GB RAM

Junos OS Release 15.1X49-D15 and Junos OS Release 17.3R1 (vSRX Virtual Firewall)

5 vCPUs / 8 GB RAM

Junos OS Release 15.1X49-D70 and Junos OS Release 17.3R1 (vSRX Virtual Firewall)

9 vCPUs / 16 GB RAM

Junos OS Release 18.4R1 (vSRX Virtual Firewall)

Junos OS Release 19.1R1 (vSRX Virtual Firewall 3.0)

17 vCPUs / 32 GB RAM

Junos OS Release 18.4R1 (vSRX Virtual Firewall)

Junos OS Release 19.1R1 (vSRX Virtual Firewall 3.0)

Flexible flow session capacity scaling by an additional vRAM

NA

Junos OS Release 19.1R1 (vSRX Virtual Firewall)

Junos OS Release 19.2R1 (vSRX Virtual Firewall 3.0)

Multicore scaling support (Software RSS)

NA Junos OS Release 19.3R1 (vSRX Virtual Firewall 3.0 only)

Reserve additional vCPU cores for the Routing Engine (vSRX Virtual Firewall and vSRX Virtual Firewall 3.0)

NA  

Virtio (virtio-net, vhost-net) (vSRX Virtual Firewall and vSRX Virtual Firewall 3.0)

NA  
Supported Hypervisors

Hypervisor support

VMware ESXi 5.1, 5.5, 6.0, and 6.5 (vSRX Virtual Firewall and vSRX Virtual Firewall 3.0)

Junos OS Release 18.4R1
VMware ESXi 6.7 (vSRX Virtual Firewall 3.0 only) Junos OS Release 19.3R1
VMware ESXi 7.0 (vSRX Virtual Firewall 3.0 only) Junos OS Release 20.1R2
Other Features

Cloud-init

NA  

Powermode IPSec (PMI)

NA  

Chassis cluster

NA  

GTP TEID based session distribution using Software RSS

NA Junos OS Release 19.3R1 onwards

On-device antivirus scan engine (Avira)

NA Junos OS Release 19.4R1 onwards

LLDP

NA Junos OS Release 21.1R1 onwards

Junos Telemetry Interface

NA Junos OS Release 20.3R1 onwards
System Requirements

Hardware acceleration/enabled VMX CPU flag in the hypervisor (vSRX Virtual Firewall only)

NA  

Disk space

16 GB (IDE or SCSI drives) (vSRX Virtual Firewall)

Junos OS Release 15.1X49-D15 and Junos OS Release 17.3R1

18 GB (vSRX Virtual Firewall 3.0)

 
Table 2: vNIC Support on vSRX Virtual Firewall
vNICs Junos OS Release Introduced
VMXNET3 SA and HA  
SR-IOV SA and HA over Intel X710/XL710/XXV710 series (vSRX Virtual Firewall 3.0)

Junos OS Release 20.4R2 onwards

SR-IOV HA on I40E ( X710,X740,X722 and so on) (vSRX Virtual Firewall 3.0) Not supported
SR-IOV SA over Intel E810 series  
SR-IOV HA over Intel E810 series Not supported
SR-IOV SA and HA over Mellanox ConnectX-3 Not supported
SR-IOV SA and HA over Mellanox ConnectX-4/5/6 (MLX5 driver only)

(SA from Junos OS Release 21.2R1 onwards)

(HA from Junos OS Release 21.2R2 onwards)

PCI passthrough over Intel 82599/X520 series Not supported
PCI passthrough over Intel X710/XL710 series Not supported on vSRX Virtual Firewall 3.0

DPDK version has been upgraded from 17.02 to 17.11.2 to support the Mellanox Family Adapters.

Junos OS Release 18.4R1

Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK) version 18.11

DPDK version 18.11 is supported on vSRX Virtual Firewall. With this feature the Mellanox Connect Network Interface Card (NIC) on vSRX Virtual Firewall now supports OSPF Multicast and VLANs.

Junos OS Release 19.4R1

Best Practices for Improving vSRX Virtual Firewall Performance

Review the following practices to improve vSRX Virtual Firewall 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 Virtual Firewall, we recommend that all vCPUs for the vSRX Virtual Firewall VM are in the same physical non-uniform memory access (NUMA) node for optimal performance.

CAUTION:

The Packet Forwarding Engine (PFE) on the vSRX Virtual Firewall 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 Virtual Firewall requires that you ensure that all vCPUs reside on the same NUMA node.

We recommend that you bind the vSRX Virtual Firewall instance with a specific NUMA node by setting NUMA node affinity. NUMA node affinity constrains the vSRX Virtual Firewall VM resource scheduling to only the specified NUMA node.

PCI NIC-to-VM Mapping

If the node on which vSRX Virtual Firewall 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 Virtual Firewall on VMware

Each network adapter defined for a vSRX Virtual Firewall is mapped to a specific interface, depending on whether the vSRX Virtual Firewall instance is a standalone VM or one of a cluster pair for high availability. The interface names and mappings in vSRX Virtual Firewall are shown in Table 3 and Table 4.

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 3 shows the interface names and mappings for a standalone vSRX Virtual Firewall VM.

Table 3: Interface Names for a Standalone vSRX Virtual Firewall VM

Network Adapter

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 4 shows the interface names and mappings for a pair of vSRX Virtual Firewall VMs in a cluster (node 0 and node 1).

Table 4: Interface Names for a vSRX Virtual Firewall Cluster Pair

Network Adapter

Interface Name in Junos OS

1

fxp0 (node 0 and 1)

2

em0 (node 0 and 1)

3

ge-0/0/0 (node 0)ge-7/0/0 (node 1)

4

ge-0/0/1 (node 0)ge-7/0/1 (node 1)

5

ge-0/0/2 (node 0)ge-7/0/2 (node 1)

6

ge-0/0/3 (node 0)ge-7/0/3 (node 1)

7

ge-0/0/4 (node 0)ge-7/0/4 (node 1)

8

ge-0/0/5 (node 0)ge-7/0/5 (node 1)

vSRX Virtual Firewall Default Settings on VMware

vSRX Virtual Firewall 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.

Note:

With vSRX Virtual Firewall platforms, VMware uses the VMXNET 3 vNIC and requires promiscuous mode on the vSwitch for the management interface, fxp0.

Table 5 lists the factory default settings for the vSRX Virtual Firewall security policies.

Table 5: Factory Default Settings for Security Policies

Source Zone

Destination Zone

Policy Action

trust

untrust

permit

trust

trust

permit

untrust

trust

deny