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Known limitations for IBM Cloud Juniper vSRX

Known limitations for IBM Cloud Juniper vSRX

There are some limitations to be aware of when using IBM Cloud® Juniper vSRX.

  • Only IBM Cloud certified versions of vSRX are supported. The list of supported versions can be found here.

  • Upgrading from Stand-alone to High Availability mode is not supported.

  • Downgrading from High Availability to Stand-alone mode is not supported.

  • Upgrading from 1G to 10G or downgrading from 10G to 1G is not supported.

  • Remote VPN licenses are only supported on versions 22.2 and later.

  • Only the latest IBM Cloud certified vSRX release is available for new orders and upgrades. Requests for older IBM Cloud certified vSRX releases should be made through an IBM Support case. Limitations for upgrading and downgrading can be found in Upgrading the vSRX.

  • Older Juniper vSRX gateways were deployed with Linux Bridge based networking virtualization. This virtualization can achieve only limited throughput and never line-rate throughput. Most deployments of vSRX 18.4 and later use SR-IOV, which provides improved throughput.

  • The speed shown for a single GE interface within the vSRX will generally show 1G for the single interfaces even when ordered as 10G. This is cosmetic and does not reflect the actual speed capability on 10Gbps vSRX appliances. You should perform speed checks on the Ubuntu host rather than on the vSRX VM. In addition, running speed tests with tools like Iperf3 can also help verify traffic throughput. Another way to verify is through the bandwidth graphs associated to the primary node vSRX. This shows the maximum and minimum throughput reached using the samples taken for the graphs.

  • Older Juniper vSRX gateways were deployed with a 60-day evaluation license, which might cause the kernel to generate error messages even when another (valid) license is on the system. Remove any 60-day evaluation licenses to avoid this issue. To do so, follow these steps:

    1. Log in to your vSRX gateway device.

    2. Enter CLI mode by running the command cli at the console prompt.

    3. Run the following command to get the license identifier:

      show system license
      

      The output is similar to the following:

      License usage:
                                     Licenses     Licenses    Licenses    Expiry
      Feature name                       used    installed      needed
      logical-system                        0            3           0    permanent
      Virtual Appliance                     1            1           0    2021-10-18 00:00:00 UTC
      remote-access-ipsec-vpn-client        0            2           0    permanent
      
      Licenses installed:
      License identifier: E2018101804
      License version: 4
      Software Serial Number: SUB00024128768
      Customer ID: IBM_SL_10G
      Features:
        Virtual Appliance - Virtual Appliance
          date-based, 2018-10-18 00:00:00 UTC - 2021-10-18 00:00:00 UTC
      
    4. Copy the identifier of the license that you want to delete, then run the command:

      request system license delete <license identifier>