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DataPower Virtual Edition for the Citrix XenServer hypervisor might experience network performance issues

Troubleshooting


Problem

DataPower Virtual Edition for the Citrix XenServer hypervisor might experience increased network latency and other network performance issues during network intensive activity.

Symptom

DataPower Virtual Edition (VE) shows lower than expected network throughput and lower than expected processor utilization with small payloads at high throughput rates when deployed on the Citrix XenServer hypervisor. This becomes more apparent as the vCPU count is increased past 8.

Cause

The Citrix XenServer openvswitch network bridge might not be able to service the high network traffic rates required by the DataPower VE guest (see Related URL section).

Environment

DataPower Virtual Edition Version 7.0.0 deployed on the Citrix XenServer Version 6.2 hypervisor.

Diagnosing The Problem

After the DataPower virtual machine is configured and operating normally, submitting workloads that involve processor or network-intensive tasks (such as the use of small payloads from multiple concurrent connections or users) can produce the symptom.

Example of a valid test case:

  1. The client sends an input message that is 5 Kb in size, via HTTP or HTTPS.
  2. On the forward path, configure the DataPower Multi-Protocol Gateway to listen on a specified port and pass-through messages to a loop-back XML firewall.
  3. On the return path, configure the Multi-Protocol Gateway to pass-through messages back to the client.
  4. Running this scenario with 100 simulated users can produce the symptom.

Resolving The Problem

From the Citrix XenServer host, enable Linux bridge mode with the command line interface by following the directions from the Citrix website URL:
http://blogs.citrix.com/2011/12/23/how-to-change-xenserver-network-backend-to-linux-bridge/

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Document Information

Modified date:
19 August 2022

UID

swg21674612