VMware NSX Edge is a virtual data center solution that provides routing, Firewall, NAT, DHCP, Site to Site VPN, SSL VPN-Plus, Load Balancing, High Availability, syslog functions. It is physically implemented as a virtual machine connected to the virtual data center networks and to external networks (Internet).
Characteristics of EDGE virtual machines:
|
Edge (Compact) |
Edge (Large) |
Edge (Quad-Large) |
Edge (X-Large) |
|
|
vCPU |
1 |
2 |
4 |
6 |
|
Memory |
512 MB |
1 GB |
1 GB |
8 GB |
|
Disk |
512 MB |
512 MB |
512 MB |
4.5 GB |
Tested configuration limits:
|
Limit |
Edge |
|
Number of interfaces |
10 |
|
Number of firewall rules |
2,000 |
|
Number of NAT rules |
2,000 |
|
Number of DHCP pools |
25 |
|
Number of static routes |
2048 |
|
Number of load balancer pools |
64 |
|
Number of load balancer virtual servers |
64 |
|
Number of members per load balancer pool |
32 |
|
Concurrent IPSec VPN Tunnels |
512(compact), 1600(Large), 4096(Quad-Large), 6000(X-Large) |
|
Concurrent SSL VPN Tunnels |
50(compact), 100(Large), 100(Quad-Large), 1000(X-Large) |
Comparison of Firewall performance:
|
Edge (Compact) |
Edge (Large) |
|
|
Firewall Performance (Gbps) |
3 |
9.7 |
|
Concurrent Sessions |
64,000 |
1,000,000 |
|
New sessions/second |
8,000 |
50,000 |
VMware recommends using Edge type Large for balancing:
|
Edge (Large) |
Edge (Quad-Large) |
Edge(X-Large) |
|
|
Load balancer throughput – L7 Proxy Mode (Gbps) |
2.2 |
2.2 |
3 |
|
Load balancer connections / sec – L7 Proxy Mode |
46,000 |
50,000 |
50,000 |
|
Load balancer concurrent connections – L7 Proxy Mode |
8,000 |
60,000 |
60,000 |
Performance measurement was done in firewall accept mode.
