Data Center Ethernet Testing Solutions

Data Centers are an integral component of most enterprises today. As data centers grow in size and complexity, the effort to manage different interconnect technologies for traffic from multiple applications is becoming resource and cost intensive. With recent advances in Ethernet speeds of 10 Gbps and the development of 40 and 100 Gbps, Ethernet has become an attractive choice as the technology for convergence in the data center. Existing standards-based Ethernet networks, however, cannot provide the service required by traffic from storage and high-performance computing applications.

• Storage Area Networks (SANs) demand a low-latency, lossless network
• Fibre channel over Ethernet (FCoE) enables the consolidation of fibre channel and Ethernet traffic on a single network which reduces the number of interfaces and cables required as well as the power and data center cooling costs.
• Data Center Ethernet requires a flexible scheduling algorithm that will allow sharing of bandwidth between lossy and lossless traffic while still achieving traffic differentiation.
• A combination of link-level flow control and end-to-end congestion management is required to achieve lossless behavior. In the absence of end-to-end flow control, link-level flow control can lead to congestion spreading and deadlock. Link-level flow control needs to be enhanced to operate per priority.
• Ethernet switch control plane needs to adopt protocols and algorithms to achieve shortest path forwarding of datagrams.

Data Center Ethernet (DCE) is the panacea to the cabling complexity, providing those enhancements. This high-performance enhancement to the Ethernet standard provides the networking infrastructure required by next generation data centers. In particular, DCE provides architectural scalability, operational controls and transport flexibility through standard Ethernet extensions allowing data center architects to create a stable, lossless transport mechanism.

Ixia's DCE testing solution features:

• Fibre Channel over Ethernet
• Lossless Ethernet protocol support
  • Priority Flow Control, FCoE Initialization Protocol (FIP)
  • Congestion Notification (CN)
• Prebuilt automated test suites
• DCE IS-IS/LLDP and Data Center Bridging Exchange Protocol (DCBXP)

Ixia's SAN testing solution featuring:

• Full Fibre Channel Protocol (FCP) Target/Initiator Emulation
• Multiple disk configurations
• Multiple OS configuration testing
• Storage vendor specific configurations
• User definable mode, diagnostic and custom inquiry pages
• Device performance testing
• Error injection and handling
• Bad device and automated initiator failover testing

Other Solutions

• Higher Speed (40/100GE) Ethernet
• Data Center
• Routing and Switching
• Application Layer
• Live Networks and Services
• Wireless
• Security
• Test Automation
• Conformance Testing