Updating the server when using PAM in a cluster

[MARUBUN SUPPORT]

Hi Team,

[Product]

Symantec Privileged Access Manager

[Question]

#1

When using PAM in a cluster, do the number of CPUs and memory size per server comply with PAM's Installation Requirements?

#2

If I add more CPU and memory to a server that is running in a cluster, will there be any problems with the operation of the clustered PAM?

Thanks,

[Joseph Fry]

1) All cluster nodes must meet or exceed the minimum requirements (https://techdocs.broadcom.com/us/en/symantec-security-software/identity-security/privileged-access-manager/4-2-1/release-information/installation-requirements.html).

2) PAM nodes do not need to have the same resource configuration when clustered.  There are situations where you may have nodes that see more user traffic and therefore it makes sense to increase the resources on those nodes; and you may have nodes that have no user traffic (a disaster recovery node for example), that could be run with minimum resources.

[MARUBUN SUPPORT]

If we were to increase this to 8 cores, are there any recommendations on the number of cores per socket and number of sockets?
4x2=8 is OK?

[Joseph Fry]

PAM doesn't care about how you arrange the sockets/cores.  We don't license PAM based on the number of CPUs or Cores.  I have seen numerous benchmarks (not PAM specific) where there is virtually no impact to performance assuming the same total number of cores.

That said, there are circumstances where VMWare could be optimized by a specific socket/core configuration, but that decision should be made by VMWare engineers.  Generally such optimization offers minimal performance gains for an application like PAM; usually such optimization is reserved for high performance processing or database workloads.