ASL prerequisites
Contents |
Introduction
ASL is a powerful security suite that will be analyzing actions of your system in real time. For it to work correctly it will need a well tuned system with reasonable resources. This document outlines the requirements for ASL to function, and recommendations for it perform optimally.
Requirements
Memory
ASL requires at least 1 GB of memory. 2 GB of memory is highly recommend to make use of all of ASLs features.
CPU
ASL does not require a 64bit CPU, however the use of 64Bit CPUs is highly recommended.
Database
When using mysql, querying caching must be enabled. The following setting in mysql must be set for ASL to perform correctly. Failure to set this will result in significant performance impact to ASL, and the system.
query_cache_size=32m
ASL disk space requirements
ASL will log and record security events on the system. The amount of space required for this will vary depending on the amount of events that occur on the system. ASL will record all of its events in the /var partition.
Therefore, you should have adequate free space available in the /var partition. We recommend at least 5GB of space in this partition. You may need to increase this depending on the amount of events that occur on your system and the archive period you have set in your ASL Configuration.
ASL components will be installed in the /boot, /usr, /etc and /var partitions. A minimum of 100MB of free space is required to install ASL, and additional space is required in /var as described above.
Recommendations
Memory
4 GB of memory is recommended for sites with lots of events and/or domains.
CPU
Multiple 64Bit CPUs are highly recommended for systems with lots of events and/or events.
Database
Query caching
When using mysql, querying caching must be enabled. Larger query caches will result in greater performance, however this must be tuned to the capabilities of the system. Larger query caches also require more memory, so to increase this setting you will need at least 2GB of RAM and preferably 4GB of RAM or more.
For example, on a system with 2GB of RAM the query cache should be set to 128M.
query_cache_size=96m
For systems with 4GB of RAM, or more, a large query cache can be used:
query_cache_size=128m
You can try larger cache sizes, but we find that 128m is generally as high as you need to go. High values may be counter productive.
Dedicated I/O channel
For systems with high volumes of events we recommend you move your mysql databases to their own I/O channel separate from your web sites and/or other file system intensive operations. This will give the database its own dedicated I/O channel to the database files. Databases can be quite large, and the ASL events database will grow over time based on the archive settings you have configured in your ASL Configuration. Therefore, a faster way of reading these databases will improve performance on the system.
mysql tuning
If you are using mysql, we highly recommend you tune it with a professionals help. mysql is a wonderful and powerful database server, but it is not tuned in its default configuration and will performance very poorly as a result. You can use the excellent tool mysqltuner to help with this, however this tool is just providing recommendations and an experts assistance should be consulted to make the best use of these recommendations.
To install mysqltuner, please run this command as root:
yum install mysqltuner
And to run it, just run this command:
mysqltuner
More information is available about mysqltuner at this website:
Disk Space
ASL will keep records as long as you desire. As a result, you should monitor your database and /var partitions drive usage and prepare accordingly to add more space based on event volume for your system.
ASL will also record other events, such as file changes and software updates in a special monitoring system, this data is also stored in /var. Please see the ASL FAQ for further details about tuning this system should you wish to use less drive space for this.
Test Server
Each ASL license lets you install ASL on a product server, a QA server and a test server. We recommend, as do all software companies, that you always test ASL and ASL upgrades on a test machine before making any changes to your production environment. We test our products heavily before putting out an updates, but no software company can account for every possible condition, configuration or environment so you should test upgrade on non-production machines before putting them into production.
