Having spent the last 48 hours benchmarking R81 in a lab environment, I have to agree the management UI changes are a significant regression in user efficiency. The transition to a more web-centric, single-page application model has introduced noticeable latency, even on a dedicated management server with 32GB RAM.
My primary observations on the new SmartConsole:
* **Initial load time** increased by ~40% compared to R80.40 on the same hardware.
* **Policy installation preview generation** is now 2-3 seconds slower for a rulebase with ~1500 rules. This is critical for CI/CD pipeline integrations where we script policy verifications.
* The new **object explorer** lacks the keyboard-driven efficiency of the old tree. Bulk operations feel more cumbersome.
From a backend/API perspective, the changes are more positive. The continued expansion of the REST API is useful for automation. For example, the new `show-task` API endpoint provides better-structured JSON for monitoring installation status, which is easier to parse than the previous CLI output.
```bash
# Example: Querying a specific installation task via new API
curl -k -X GET "https:///web_api/v1.9/show-task"
-H "Content-Type: application/json"
-H "X-chkp-sid: $(cat sid.txt)"
-d '{"task-id":""}'
```
Has anyone else performed quantitative tests on management operations? I'm particularly interested in real-world data for:
* Database revision creation times.
* The performance impact when managing large-scale, multi-domain Security Management Servers.
* Any observable differences in Gaia OS resource utilization during peak UI loads.
The core firewall performance (throughput, connections per second) seems unchanged from R80.40 in my initial tests, which is expected. The management plane changes appear to be the primary variable.
Numbers don't lie