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Improving performance

When you configure your FortiWeb appliance and its features, there are many settings and practices that can yield better performance.

System performance

Antivirus performance

Regular expression performance tips

^.*/index\.html$

/index.html

Short regular expressions can sometimes be more complex to compute. Don’t look at the number of characters in the regular expression. Instead, think of both the usual and worst possible case in the match string: the maximum number of characters that must be compared to the pattern before a match can be verified or not.

The usual case will tell you the average CPU and RAM load. The worst case will tell you if your regular expression could sometimes cause potential hang-like conditions, temporarily blocking traffic throughput until it finishes evaluating.

 

If the worst possible match string is short and not complex to match, the regular expression may not be worth your time to optimize.

For example, when using auto-learning to discover if street addresses are a valid input, scanning for postal codes or state abbreviations instead may dramatically improve performance. A pattern to fully match all possible street addresses is significantly more complex, involving many more computations, and the most difficult addresses to verify might be complex enough to impact traffic throughput.

If missed matches are an acceptable performance trade-off (for example, if matching 99% of cases is efficient, but matching 100% of cases would require deep recursion), or if you do not need to match the whole text, remove the unnecessary part of the regular expression.

For example, if a phone number always resembles 555-5555, your regular expression would not have to accommodate cases where a space separates the numbers, or it is prefixed by a country code. This is less comprehensive, but also less CPU-intensive.

Logging performance

Log&Report > Log Policy > Email Policy

Report performance

Generating reports can be resource intensive. To avoid performance impacts, consider scheduling report generation during times with low traffic volume, such as at night and on weekends. See the illustration Log&Report > Report Config > Report Config and Scheduling reports.

Log&Report > Report Config > Report Config

Keep in mind that most reports are based upon log messages. All caveats regarding log performance also apply.

Auto-learning performance

Auto Learn > Predefined Pattern > Data Type Group

Auto Learn > Predefined Pattern > Suspicious URL

Disabling unnecessary server information disclosure signatures in Web Protection > Known Attacks > Signatures

The Information Disclosure feature can potentially require the FortiWeb appliance to rewrite the header of every request from a server, resulting in reduced performance. Fortinet recommends enabling this feature only to help you identify information disclosure through logging, and until you can reconfigure the server to omit such sensitive information. Clear the All / None check box to disable the feature.

Omitting large files from the backup in Web Anti-Defacement > Web Anti-Defacement >Web Site with Anti-Defacement

Unless you need to back up large files, reduce the setting for the Skip Files Larger Than option from the default of 10 240 KB.

Use the Skip Files With These Extensions option to exclude specific types of large files, such as compressed files and video clips.

Vulnerability scan performance

Vulnerability scan performance depends on the speed and reliability of your network. It also can be impacted by your configuration. See Delay Between Each Request.

Packet capture performance

Packet capture can be useful for troubleshooting but can be resource intensive. (See Packet capture.) To minimize the performance impact on your FortiWeb appliance, use packet capture only during periods of minimal traffic. Use a local console CLI connection rather than a Telnet or SSH CLI connection, and be sure to stop the command when you are finished.