SDX SSL Chips Test

The term ‘SSL Core / Chip’ is used to represent an assignment in hardware of a number of Cavium cores. The SDX appliance uses these Cavium cores to accelerate SSL traffic in hardware. Each VPX instance on a ADC SDX instance is assigned one/more SSL cores/chips at the time of configuration. If one/more instances over-utilize the SSL chips, other instances may not have enough SSL chips for processing their SSL traffic. This can cause a significant delay in SSL processing on the VPX instances. This is where the SDX SSL Chips test helps! This test monitors and reports the SSL core usage on the SDX appliance and warns administrators of a potential contention for SSL cores/chips. Administrators are thus enabled to promptly initiate measures for averting the contention and the resulting slowness.

Target of the test : Citrix ADC SDX

Agent deploying the test : A remote agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for the target ADC SDX.

Configurable parameters for the test

Parameter	Description
Test Period	How often should the test be executed
Host	The host for which the test is to be configured.
SDX Username and SDX Password	To monitor a ADC SDX device, the eG agent should be configured with the credentials of a user with read-only privileges to the target device. Specify the credentials of such a user in the SDX Username and SDX Password text boxes.
Confirm Password	Confirm the password by retyping it here.
SSL	The eG agent collects performance metrics by invoking NITRO (ADC Interface Through Restful interfaces and Objects) APIs on the target ADC SDX device. Typically, the NITRO APIs can be invoked through the HTTP or the HTTPS mode. By default, the eG agent invokes the NITRO APIs using the HTTPS mode. This is why, the SSL flag is set to Yes by default. If the target ADC SDX device is not SSL-enabled, then the NITRO APIs can be accessed through the HTTP mode only. In this case, set the SSL flag to No.

Measurements made by the test

Measurement	Description	Measurement Unit	Interpretation
Total SSL chips	Indicates the total number of SSL cores/chips on the SDX appliance.	Number
Free SSL chips	Indicates the number of SSL cores/chips that are unused.	Number	A high value is desired for this measure.
Used SSL chips	Indicates the number of SSL cores/chips that are in use.	Number	A low value is desired for this measure.
SSL chip usage	Indicates the percentage of SSL cores/chips that are utilized.	Percent	A value close to 100% for this measure could indicate that one/more VPX instances are hogging the SSL cores/chips. You may want to allocate more SSL cores/chips to such instances, so as to avert a potential resource contention. When allocating SSL cores to an instance, remember that memory and SSL cores are interlinked. This means that when assigning each SSL core it will be necessary to assign 1Gb of memory per core.