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Check Point CCSE lab 9 of 10

Monitoring and performance

Learn to read a gateway quickly. Take a health snapshot with cpstat and cpview, see how CoreXL and SecureXL share the work, and query the logs. Then solve a real puzzle: a site that fails with nothing in the logs, because the rule that blocks it doesn't log. Find it with fw ctl zdebug and fix it.

Run this lab

It needs Standard: its 6 nodes are set to 10 vCPU and 15,872 MB in total.

In your workspace: Shared, then Check Point CCSE guided labs, then 09 - Monitoring and performance

Run it on Standard from £5 a day

The free demo can’t run it: it has 6 vCPU and 8 GB, and this lab’s nodes need 10 vCPU and 15,872 MB together. Every lab plan includes every guided lab.

Level
Advanced
Time
About 90 minutes
Nodes need
10 vCPU, 15,872 MB
Smallest plan
Standard

The scenario

Two requests have arrived on the same morning. The IT manager wants a health report on HQ-GW for the quarterly review. And users say that one site, 198.51.100.20, doesn't load from HQ-PC, while 198.51.100.10 is fine. They've already looked at the logs and found nothing.

Both sites are on the same router, so this isn't the provider. The rule base should allow both.

Keep some traffic going while you work. On HQ-PC:

(while :; do wget -q -T 3 -O /dev/null http://198.51.100.10/; wget -q -T 3 -O /dev/null http://10.0.2.20/; sleep 2; done > /dev/null 2>&1 &)

What you’ll practise

  • Take a health snapshot with cpstat, cpview and fw ctl pstat
  • Read CoreXL instances and affinity with fw ctl multik stat and fw ctl affinity
  • Read SecureXL acceleration with fwaccel stat and fwaccel stats -s
  • Query logs from the command line with show-logs
  • Find a silent drop with fw ctl zdebug and map it to a rule
  • Find which rule accepted a connection with fw ctl conntab

The tasks

  1. A health snapshot
  2. cpview
  3. CoreXL and SecureXL
  4. Query the logs
  5. Find the silent drop
  6. Fix it, and check which rule now matches

The Lab Tasks pane has the scenario, these tasks, the checks to run, hints and the full solution.

Topology and devices

The network as it opens in EVE-NG, drawn from the lab’s own canvas, and the image each node runs.

Topology of Monitoring and performance6 nodes and 2 networks, 7 links. Every link is listed as text below the diagram.SMSHQ-GWISPHQ-PCDMZ-WEBADMIN-PCHQ-LANInternetGi0/0eth0eth0eth1eth0eth0eth2eth0
6 nodes and 2 networks, with the interface names each link uses. On a narrow screen, scroll the diagram sideways.
Every link, as text
  • SMS eth0 to HQ-LAN (network)
  • HQ-GW eth0 to HQ-LAN (network)
  • HQ-GW eth1 to Internet (network)
  • HQ-PC eth0 to HQ-LAN (network)
  • ADMIN-PC eth0 to HQ-LAN (network)
  • ISP Gi0/0 to Internet (network)
  • HQ-GW eth2 to DMZ-WEB eth0
Nodes in Monitoring and performance, with the image each runs and the vCPU and RAM it’s set to
NodeDeviceImage in Add NodeSet to
SMSCheck Point Security Management Servercpsms-R81.20-Licensed4 vCPU, 8,192 MB
HQ-GWCheck Point Security Gateway VE (cpsg template)cpsg-R81.20-Licensed2 vCPU, 4,096 MB
ISPCisco IOSvvios-adventerprisek9-m.SPA.159-3.M61 vCPU, 512 MB
HQ-PCAlpine Linuxclbalpinebase-alpine-base-3-20-31 vCPU, 512 MB
DMZ-WEBAlpine Linuxclbalpinebase-alpine-base-3-20-31 vCPU, 512 MB
ADMIN-PCEVE-NG Firefox browser (Docker)eve-firefox:latest1 vCPU, 2,048 MB

How to open this lab

  1. Sign in to your workspace at lab.cloudlabbox.com.

  2. In File Manager, open Shared, then the folder Check Point CCSE guided labs.

  3. Open 09 - Monitoring and performance and start its nodes, then open Lab Tasks for the scenario and the steps.

The lab is read-only. You can start the nodes and configure the devices, but changes to the topology can’t be saved. To change it, rebuild it in your own folder.

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CloudLabBox is independent of Check Point and Cisco. The lab follows exam topics and isn’t vendor training material; vendor names identify the exams and the images in the workspace.