IxNetwork—Converged Data Center Ethernet Test Solution

Problem: Data Center Expansion with Unified Networks Introduces New Failure Points

To capture the efficiency and cost-savings promises of cloud computing, server virtualization, and data center consolidation, organizations need highly flexible, scalable, and low-latency data center architectures. Data center operators converging LANs and SANs onto a single unified fabric need to ensure a lossless transport layer by consolidating and optimizing their networks. But each new and multiple-domain technology required to realize seamless server virtualization, converged storage, and cloud federation brings complexity and failure points. To ensure quality in these converged data center Ethernet networks, each new technology must be thoroughly tested in a silo, then validated end-to-end as a whole system, prior to deployment.

Solution: A Comprehensive Data Center Ethernet Test Solution for a Converged Data Center

Keysight’s IxNetwork Data Center Ethernet test solution covers technologies from Storage Area Network (SAN) migration to Ethernet, to data center consolidation with Layer 2 Multi-Path (L2MP), to virtualization overlay technologies for server virtualization. It enables users to emulate various network components to test converged data center networks from end to end.

Highlights

• Validate the consolidation and convergence of Fibre Channel and Ethernet into a unified fabric for energyefficient, high-performing data centers

• Qualify the Layer 2 Ethernet infrastructure with activeactive multipath to support highly scalable and highly redundant next generation data center fabric 

• Benchmark DUT forwarding performance for delivering converged data center traffic

• Use real-world scenario emulation to put design to the test before deployment; for equipment manufacturers, system integrator, and data center operators

Key features

• Emulates DCBX and FCoE and traffic generation to evaluate the functionality, performance, and scalability of a DCB/FCoE switch providing lossless Ethernet transport for FCoE while still servicing native Ethernet traffic

• Supports 2G/4G/8G Fibre Channel integrated with DCB/FCoE in the same test  

• Supports Priority Flow Control (PFC) to test DUT’s capability to prevents frame loss  during congestion

• Emulates Layer 2 Multipath (L2MP) / Equal Cost Multi Path (ECMP) technologies, including IETF TRILL, IEEE SPBM, and Cisco FabricPath

• Supports Virtual Ethernet Port Aggregator (VEPA) and Cisco proprietary VNTAG/VIC emulation

• Includes IxCloudPerf QuickTest to determine the traffic delivery performance of a data center fabric in forwarding a variety of north-south and east-west traffic in cloud computing applications