daralla
Hi, I'm working on a test setup with a VPN Server (HP G260 Mini-PC Pentium 3558U 4GB RAM Windows 7) behind a Kabel Router, VPN in bridged mode. Up to now I'm just testing with a single client and so far, everything works well.
On the real setup the plan is to have at least 3, maybe 4 clients access the server simultaneously. Now to the question that occured to me:
From a performance standpoint, would it be better to run multiple OpenVPN instances (with different ports of course) on the server, each serving 1 client, or is one server instance for the max. 4 clients the more sensible choice? The 3 or 4 clients will all access from the same, non-moving remote side, if that matters.
Has anyone experiences in this regard? Thank you.
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daralla
TinCanTech
daralla wroteI'm working on a test setup
Did you test it yet ?
I'm curious to know if there are any performance changes :ugeek:
daralla
The multiple servers vs. one? Not yet. Curently still at one server and only one client, and not yet at the final server destination. By the end of the week, I hope.
I had also hoped someone could tell me the advantages / disadvantages in advance... 🙂
TinCanTech
Having more server instances running will add more processing power but for four clients I doubt you will see any improvement. More important that that would be AES-NI on-chip support.
daralla
Yeah, I'm aware a CPU with AES support would help, but a different Server is not in the Budget, have to work with the HP G260. Speed (or rather functionality of the medical software used) is priority, security secondary, so I already made the compromise to use only AES-128 as cipher.
With the current setup of only 1 client, the CPU is at 8 to 15 percent during heavy use of the tunnel, let's see how it goes with 3 or 4 clients. The max upload speed on the VPN Server side is fixed at 10 Mbit/s, that's obviously another limitation.
I guess I'll first run everything with a single server instance. If there are speed problems I'll try switching to one server instance per client and see if it makes a difference.
TinCanTech
Currently, openvpn is a single threaded process .. so multiple servers can at least use separate cores.
Set affinity with the host OS, set process priority in HKLM/software/openvpn
Unless you absolutely must, do not use a network bridge.
If you have a spare disc try Linux as your server OS for access to some other options.
Finally, running heavy usage openvpn on a live application server is probably not a good idea.
So .. be wary of that.
daralla
Well, this is my first contact with OpenVPN, I combined two tutorials to setup bridged mode which worked well. I did read along the way that routed mode produces less traffic, but when I tried that I quickly got lost what to route where on what device.
The goal sounds simple, I need 4 Clients on location A to be able and map a share on a server on location B, all PC working with Windows 7, both locations with different subnets behind a Fritzbox Router. First try was to connect the routers LAN-to-LAN, easy and worked but dead-slow. Then OpenVPN bridged mode, worked too and much faster. Surely the optimum would be routed mode, but I can't work it out ATM.
