Q3-2024 - Proxmox and XxxSense firewall router - Atom C-Series embedded QAT acceleration passthrough.

[HeneryH]

Just ordered two (Mini PC Q20300G9-S10 Series CPU Atom C3808, 10G SFP+/ 2.5G LAN/ Qotom Mini Server/ Router Firewall) devices with the goal of having two of my locations have a site-to-site vpn.

I'm a techie but a noob at this.

The CPU in these devices is an Intel C-Series that has embedded QAT. Not an add-on card.

There are plenty of threads here about Proxmox passing QAT through to a XxxSense vm but I have two questions... 1) is the complication still needed in Q4-2024 and 2) is there any difference between PCIe add-on card or embedded QAT?

My device are inbound and will hopefully by next weekend for me to benchtop set up.

Any advice from the crew?

Thanks

 

[HeneryH]

Some things I have read about using QAT in PFSense say that you should turn off Vt-d due to it conflicting with QAT but that statement must be when running PFSense on bare metal. If I turn off VT-d in BIOS then is surely must impact the ability of ProxMox to the VM.

Right?

I've read about using passthrough of the GPU to help get the QAT passthrough working. But the C-series Atom processors don't have a GPU. That seems like a mismatch.

The machine I picked is a Atom C-Series with QAT and 12 cores. I want to run XxxSense in one VM with QAT passed through and a second Ubuntu VM for some home lab services that need 24x7.

 

[HeneryH]

Just got my two units in. I'll set one up with OpenSense on bare metal and the other one with OpenSense on ProxMox and see if I can see any diffferences with trying to use QAT.

 

[Nordicjan]

and?
how large is the performance penalty

 

[HeneryH]

and?
how large is the performance penalty

I have my two units setup with ProxMox right now and the settings look like I am passing the QAT accellerator through to OPNsense. OPNsense looks like I can toggle use of QAT so I am trying to gin up a tabletop experiment where I can run a benchmark with and without QAT turned on.

You have any ideas on a good test case?

I think I have available two Denverton units with OPNsense on ProxMox, two SFP+ managed routers and two DAC cables.

I'm a noob at this so just getting a benchmark test running is new for me.

 

[leeks]

What was your verdict and experience with the C3808? Would like to know how they have been performing so far.