Choosing datacenter firewall

[Jonn cos]

Hi all,

I want to understand how cisco places its firewall in datacenter. I mean, lets consider a scenario where there is 1 6509E switch with SUP 720 providing 720Gpbs backplane. They have around 50 servers connected over 1G (few of them using port channels, IBM servers) which totals like ~80 Gbps connection overall ( i know servers are usually not linerate but just for the sake of understanding). Now Cisco's highest firewall is ASA 5585-x with SSP 60 providing a throughput of 40gbps. So how the placement of firewall is done ? i mean consider nexus switches with Tbps of throughput and we are placing 40Gbps max firewall ? Wont it create bottleneck ?

[rfalconer.sffcu]

You have to understand your traffic flows to determine where/if there will be any bottlenecks in a network. A few very basic quesions might be: how much traffic is between servers? Is there enough iops in your storage system? ? Is all traffic passing through a firewall?

WAN and internet will already be bottlenecks as well.

Without understanding how applications/data flows work, it's impossible to determine requirements on anything. Oversubscription is common everywhere in a network. There are environments where 80gpbs of firewall definitely won't be enough.