ACE20 SSL-connection rate performance

Question

Hello,
One of our customers are challenging our ACE20 modules ssl-connection rate performance. During a loadtest performed against our webportals, they concluded, that the ACE-module showed signs of severe performance degredations, when the number of new ssl-connections hit 40.
While I disagree with that conclusion, I find it somewhat difficult to disprove it. Nothing on the ACE-module suggest any ssl-resource depletion, the highest recorded ssl-connection rate is 677 tps and the license permits 10k. The context is currently sized to 4k. I've gone through numerous troubleshooting steps, trying to locate anything that would suggest a problem with the module, but so far nothing has turned up.
I've been given somewhat conflicting information about what the ssl-connection rate resouce actually represent. Some say is represent the total number of new ssl-connections pr/sec, other say it represents ssl-transaction capacity as a whole, which among other things would include ssl-handshakes. Regardsless, 40 in my opinion seems way to low and this is very inconsistent with the generel load on our modules, which often climbs into the hundreds.
So I'm looking for suggestions on how to conduct a simple ssl/tps test against the ACE-modules. The test is expected to be very basic, as I'm not looking to test the webportal end-to-end, but simply doing an ssl-tps performace test.
Any help will do
Thanks
/Ulrich

Answer 1

Hi,
The connection will be denied once the SSL connection rate is exceeded.
That can be identified by using the command :
show resource usage all
You will see something like this :
        Resource         Current       Peak        Min        Max       Denied
ssl-connections rate        995       1000          0       1000     28975
You will notice that the deny counter will start increasing once the rate is exceeded.
hope that helps.
regards,
Ajay Kumar