Palo Alto Firewall Overload!?

#paloaltonetworks is renowned for its cutting-edge #firewalls and cloud-based services. Although its appliances are renowned for their high performance, they can still be negatively impacted by heavy CPU loads, just like any other computing device.

A Palo Alto firewall's CPU usage may be impacted by the following typical loads:

Traffic Inspection: Comprehensive packet inspection and application-level gateways can consume a lot of CPU time.

Security Services: Because they need to process and analyze network traffic, features like antivirus, anti-spyware, intrusion prevention system (IPS), and URL filtering all put more strain on the CPU.

Decrypting and examining SSL/TLS-encrypted traffic requires a significant amount of CPU power.

Logging: Excessive logging can tax the CPU.For example, exporting logs to Syslog, Panorama, or other third-party systems.

Threat prevention: Real-time threat detection and mitigation tasks can place a heavy workload on the CPU.

Regularly updating databases and threat prevention systems can momentarily put more strain on the CPU.

User Identification (User-ID): Processing a lot of user-to-IP mappings can be expensive in terms of CPU usage.

Dynamic Routing: Complex or extensive dynamic routing can significantly impact the CPU, particularly when OSPF or BGP are used.

VPN tunnels: Establishing and maintaining VPN tunnels, particularly in large numbers or with high traffic volumes, can tax the CPU.

Synchronization for high availability (HA): If the firewall is part of a high-availability pair, synchronization for session state and configuration data can also put a strain on the CPU.

Finding out which processes are using the most CPU is the first step in troubleshooting high CPU usage on a Palo Alto firewall. The command line interface (CLI) can be used for this, and commands like "show system resources" and "show running resource-monitor" can be used. The problem can be mitigated after the offending processes have been identified.

What is the typical CPU load for a daemon for an optimized Palo Alto configuration?

It's important to remember that CPU load can vary significantly depending on a number of variables, including the particular model of firewall, the network environment, the features activated, and the volume of traffic being processed. Under typical operating conditions, the CPU load for any given process should typically be manageable and not excessively high in an optimized Palo Alto firewall configuration.

Although these figures will differ, the following gives you a general idea of what you might see in an optimized environment:.

It should remain below 30% during normal operation, according to the Management Plane Daemon (mgmtsrvr). During intensive management operations, there may be brief spikes.

Device Server Process (devsrvr): This is also anticipated to remain below 30% during typical operation. If the configuration changes or there is a lot of traffic, it might spike.

The operation of the network's data plane is handled by the Dataplane Network Process (dpdk). The amount and type of traffic being processed directly affects load, which varies greatly. You might anticipate it to operate at around 50% or less in a balanced configuration.

Traffic logs (logrcvr): Logging can be CPU-intensive, but in a well-optimized setting with properly controlled logging levels, this should stay under 20%.

SSL Proxy (sslproxy): Decrypting SSL traffic may require a lot of CPU power. Although CPU usage can vary greatly, in a well-optimized setting, it may be between 20 and 30 percent.

Threat Inspection (all threat prevention daemons): This group includes daemons like brightcloudurlf, pan_bc_download, wf_api, etc. Each of these ought to be operating at a manageable level in an optimized configuration, usually under 20 percent.

Keep in mind that these are just estimates that may change depending on a variety of variables. It is always advised to regularly check the performance of your firewall to ensure that all operations are carried out effectively. In order to find out the precise tuning guidelines and practices for your environment, you should also speak with your network team or Palo Alto Networks support.