Netgate Discussion Forum
    • Categories
    • Recent
    • Tags
    • Popular
    • Users
    • Search
    • Register
    • Login

    Hi CPU usage when have high traffic

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Traffic Shaping
    8 Posts 5 Posters 876 Views
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as topic
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with topic management privileges can see it.
    • Y
      YossiZa
      last edited by

      Hi!

      I'm running a pfSense on dedicated machine and I have a lot of traffic.
      My CPU is running on 90% in the minimum and getting evenly to 100%.
      My traffic is between 5-7 Gbps and when I'm getting to high peaks my machine goes to 100% CPU and then I start to see loss.

      my CPU: 2 CPUs E5-2620 and 64GB RAM
      pfSense version: 2.4.5-RELEASE-p1

      Is there any optimizations that I can do to increase the CPU usage? or that I need to replace my CPUs?

      provelsP 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • provelsP
        provels @YossiZa
        last edited by provels

        @YossiZa Sounds like you need more hardware. Those procs are like 8 years old. What server platform and NICs?

        Peder

        MAIN - pfSense+ 24.11-RELEASE - Adlink MXE-5401, i7, 16 GB RAM, 64 GB SSD. 500 GB HDD for SyslogNG
        BACKUP - pfSense+ 23.01-RELEASE - Hyper-V Virtual Machine, Gen 1, 2 v-CPUs, 3 GB RAM, 8GB VHDX (Dynamic)

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • Y
          YossiZa
          last edited by

          The Server is Dell PowerEdge R620 and my network cards are Chelsio and Intel.
          the Chelsio is Chelsio t520, the Intel one is not in use right now.

          Cool_CoronaC 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • Cool_CoronaC
            Cool_Corona @YossiZa
            last edited by

            @YossiZa said in Hi CPU usage when have high traffic:

            The Server is Dell PowerEdge R620 and my network cards are Chelsio and Intel.
            the Chelsio is Chelsio t520, the Intel one is not in use right now.

            How many cores??

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • Y
              YossiZa
              last edited by

              2 CPUs Intel Xeon E5-2620, 12 cores total
              hyperthreading is off in BIOS.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • B
                bobbenheim
                last edited by

                Have you done any optimizations so far?

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • Y
                  YossiZa
                  last edited by

                  we've done a few optimizations in the pfSense's settings.

                  The problem was solved just when we replaced the CPUs to a new model(from E5-2620 to E5-2680 v2).
                  The CPU usage reduced from 90% to 30%-35% and in full load it goes to ~50%.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • H
                    Harvy66
                    last edited by

                    @YossiZa said in Hi CPU usage when have high traffic:

                    E5-2680 v2

                    E5-2680 v2 has 40% more memory bandwidth. CPU usage is not just a metric of how hard a CPU is working, it's a metric of how many cycles the CPU is having to wait for work to be done. CPU bound work is as fast as the CPU can process it. But memory bound work has to wait for the memory to respond. If the memory is at its max, then the CPU will spend more time waiting not doing anything. The more cache can't hurt either. Fewer memory accesses required.

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • First post
                      Last post
                    Copyright 2025 Rubicon Communications LLC (Netgate). All rights reserved.