Two Clustered 220s slower than a single 220?

BAlfson · #1 (**permalink**) 09-20-2008, 01:32 AM

I have a client with a cluster of two ASG220s. Initially, they were on V6, and we ran the two units side-by-side on different T1s. One box rarely ran above 0.2 and the other almost never got over 1. The sun shown brightly.

For the first 11 months they were clustered, the high volume of spam that was being saved in the quarantine caused the cluster to be pegged at 100% most of the time. Most days, the average was over 98%. Occasionally, we would have to reboot just to be able to start email flowing again and allow people to access the internet. Those were dark days.

V7.300 was the renaissance for their cluster because the new SMTP proxy knew how to reject and blackhole most of the spam. Unfortunately, there appears to have been a glitch in the 7.202-to--7.300 upgrade. In order to keep the cluster functioning now, we've had to disable IPS. With IPS running, it was often pegged at 100% and caused problems with some (not even most!) 'delivered' emails getting stuck in the cluster instead of going to their exchange server.

SO, here's the question:

Has anyone with an active/active cluster seen that it is faster than a single, stand-alone unit? If so, I would like to know about it. I don't know if we have a hardware malfunction or not.

Thanks - Bob

mkiehl · #2 (**permalink**) 09-22-2008, 03:16 AM

Bob,

We currently have 3 clients running in this way. We have noticed that using 2 220's will definitely give us trouble if the client has even has average email traffic and uses IDS or HTTP proxy. One thing that I have to keep reminding my engs. is that in a cluster setup the first two appliances really don't share load it is the third "worker" device that really start that process. So if you have 2 appliances (220's) that each have the standard 512 of memory you may indeed notice that your master node is pegged @ 100% quite often.

Before we ever look at installing a cluster we always do a load analysis to determine the sizing of the devices. I will say this, that once the 3rd device comes on line we see a huge difference in performance.

Hope this helps.

Mike

BAlfson · #3 (**permalink**) 09-25-2008, 04:36 PM

Thanks, it appears that two-unit clustering is not advised for the original 220s, and that the overhead for clustering is higher than was known 18 months ago. Apparently, 320s and above do fine in two-unit clusters.

darrelld · #4 (**permalink**) 05-04-2009, 10:11 PM

Has anyone tried ASG220 v2 or v3 with Active/Active?

MaxPalue · #5 (**permalink**) 05-17-2009, 03:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by darrelld

Has anyone tried ASG220 v2 or v3 with Active/Active?

Hi, we passive HA and ASG 220 HA active / acvtive in customer enviroments. For my opinion is the ASG 220 V1 and V2 as Cluster solution to to slow. We run in big trubble by updating the active / passiv and the active / active cluster. I have read the recommondation from G. Hansen (Astro) and follow up them, but i run huge problems. To solve the update problem, i destroy in both cases the cluster and configure the cluster function new at the end of the update process. After destroying the cluster, i am updating the single bos from 7.306 to 7.402. For updating the other single box, i use the ASI - Stick from Astaro. This stick is verry helpfull an the installtion of the image runs fast.

I recommend highly to sell / by ASG 320 and higher for any HA Solution.

BAlfson · #6 (**permalink**) 05-17-2009, 06:01 PM

Even with ASG220-V2, the active/active cluster of two units is at our client's site is slower and less-powerful than was a single unit when we had a hardware failure on the other. At least the cluster runs well enough that it doesn't have the problems I described in the first post above.

Knowing what I know now, I would never sell a cluster of 220s. Two of them are impractical, and, over the first three years, it's cheaper to have two 320s in active/passive than three 220s in active/active/active. If you need more that one active 320, then two 320s are undoubtedly faster than three 220s and less-expensive than four active 220s. Add to that the fact that the 220s have no gigabit ports, and the choice is clear.

Cheers - Bob

MaxPalue · #7 (**permalink**) 05-17-2009, 08:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BAlfson

Even with ASG220-V2, the active/active cluster of two units is at our client's site is slower and less-powerful than was a single unit when we had a hardware failure on the other. At least the cluster runs well enough that it doesn't have the problems I described in the first post above.

Knowing what I know now, I would never sell a cluster of 220s. Two of them are impractical, and, over the first three years, it's cheaper to have two 320s in active/passive than three 220s in active/active/active. If you need more that one active 320, then two 320s are undoubtedly faster than three 220s and less-expensive than four active 220s. Add to that the fact that the 220s have no gigabit ports, and the choice is clear.

Cheers - Bob

Hi Bob,

both ASG 220 installations are based on customers wishes. My Company recommend ASG 320 and faster maschines

smoore · #8 (**permalink**) 06-04-2009, 12:41 PM

I am new to Astaro, and for financial reasons had a customer buy two ASG120's to use in a cluster. They are using the ASG's for firewall, IPS, content filtering. They generate a lot of web traffic so the ASG's stay very busy. With one in place, the CPU would stay about 70-80%. Once the cluster was in place the CPU on both boxes stay about 20-30%. I believe it is working well.

We have had however, two complete failures of the cluster that had something to do with the database becoming corrupt. Astaro has made a change in the database that has stabilized the issue and I was told should be permanent in the 7.403 release.

The issue I have is that I still don't feel I have a good understanding of how the cluster works with 2 nodes. I had this solution blessed by Astaro and told the 2 ASG's would work well together and share the load - and they appear to be doing so. After the solution was sold I read about using 2 units vs 3 and that the advantage seems to be when 3 units are used, that the 2nd unit doesn't contribute much with the work load.

Is there any good documentation that explains exactly how the cluster works? Thanks.

MagicMike · #9 (**permalink**) 07-01-2009, 10:43 PM

This sounds interesting. We have a possibility to run 3x ASG220 v1, which sounds like a good idea. Will most likely try this one day.

But is there anyone with realistic experience of ASG220 v1 with 7.4xx? Because I have found that a basic non-active conf runs on lower usage compared to 7.3xx. So is the upgrade to 1G really needed?

And what about virtual confs - is it reasonable to have a virtual HA/cluster, or just rely on the pure HA/clustering power and features of the virtual platform?

tkaufi · #10 (**permalink**) 07-02-2009, 08:55 AM

hi,

IMHO i found no significant performance differences between a single 220 and a 220 cluster.

We´re using a 2 x 220 cluster for over one year now with no bigger problems. Only the firmware changes made some troubles. But if you follow the cookbooks here in the forum, this won´t be a problem anymore.

Trusting the logs, the load of the systems is well shared.

Even the most recommendations from several Astaro Partners were to use the 320s as an cluster for our over 250 users, we´ve decided due to the exceptional more expensive costs (hw, licenses, subscriptions) to use the 220s.

Frequently we shut down one of the 220s for testing the HA and performance.
Thats working fine, but at last we see that the cluster solution is not really faster, but even not slower and in the end more reliable.

CU
Thomas