Data Center: Overview

Data centers are undergoing tremendous evolution in an effort to improve infrastructure efficiency, flexibility and cost-effectiveness. Key trends include I/O consolidation, server virtualization, integration of higher speed Ethernet, and convergence of LAN and storage traffic over a unified Ethernet network. A new generation of data center equipment and technologies is under development to facilitate this transformation. With the revolutionary change in the way data center networks are designed, deployed and managed, new testing methodologies must be employed to verify the converged data center 'hot spots' illustrated below.

Testing next generation data center switches, servers, converged network adapters (CNAs), and storage using a single unified test platform is critical to ensuring that the infrastructure is reliable, secure and scalable, and that the goal of resource optimization and improved flexibility is actually realized.

Ixia: The only unified test platform for converged data centers

Ixia accelerates time-to-market, improves confidence and maximizes ROI by integrating the industry's highest-density test cards and most comprehensive portfolio of test applications to provide the only unified test platform for holistic certification of converged data centers.

Ixia's platform and test applications feature:

• Protocol emulation for testing the functionality, performance, scalability and robustness of key technologies, including FCoE and fibre channel protocols, data center bridging protocols that implement lossless Ethernet, and network and authentication protocols
• Real fibre channel protocol (FCP) target and initiator emulation to test I/O performance in a converged environment
• Stateful enterprise application traffic to fully load a device with a realistic mixture of application and data storage traffic
• Virtual traffic generators to measure the performance of heavy data movement between virtual machines (VMs)
• Analysis tools to validate policy enforcement, port mirroring and VLAN trunking capabilities
• Fully integrated energy consumption measurements correlated with network load

Use Ixia's test solutions to:

• Accelerate time-to-market using test wizards, industry leading automation, conformance tests and pre-built performance benchmarking test suites
• Improve confidence by testing with the most scalable mix of real-world traffic, protocols and features for complete device characterization both in isolation, and in an end-to-end fashion
• Maximize return on your test investment by running any application on the industry's highest density 2/4/8G fibre channel and 1G, 10G, 40/100G Ethernet load modules supported in the same unified chassis
  • Scale up to 192 x 1G Ethernet or 96 x 10 G Ethernet or 96 x 2/4/8G fibre channel interfaces in a 10U height XM12 chassis to fully-load data center equipment and systems
  • Run all 8 fibre channel ports at any speed (2/4/8G) to scale test configurations without re-cabling the test setup
  • Measure both throughput and I/O performance without resorting to multiple test platforms

Select a link below to see how Ixia's Data Center Test Solution can help you:

• Switch Vendors
• CNA Vendors
• Server Vendors
• Storage Device Vendors
• Virtualization and Cloud Computing