Network Performance Testing

Industry ’s Largest 10 Gigabit Ethernet Test

A pretty interesting press release from Spirent on the Industry’s Largest 10 Gigabit Ethernet Test. Looks like they tested the new Cisco Nexus 7000 Data Center Switch with the Spirent Test Center chassis. They tested 256 10GB ports and tested high availability, throughput, latency, and a bunch of other things. Sounds like quite a switch. In particular I am interested in what 10GB cards were used on the switch, as well as all of the details on the Spirent Test Center chassis - was it one STC chassis, or multiple? What 10GB cards are used in the STC chassis? How long did the tests take to run? I am hoping there will be a full report released with all details - since Network World was involved, it could be likely.

QuikCycle and EdenTree now Gale Technologies

I guess I must have been sleeping, because I completely missed this one. QuikCycle and EdenTree have merged and formed Gale Technologies: Gale Technologies is a new company, formed by the merger of QuikCycle, Inc. and Edentree Technologies. With over 100 lab installations across more than 70 customers, Gale Technologies combines the two pioneers of lab management and test automation, whose innovative software solutions accelerate and optimize the testing lifecycle for equipment vendors, service providers, and enterprises around the world. Please stay tuned as the Gale Technologies news machine ramps up to full force ... It looks like we'll know more soon...

Creating a robust performance testing methodology

I thought I'd share a link to a document that the company I work for produced a bit over a year ago entitled Creating a Robust Performance Testing Methodology. Although some parts of it are specific to Application Delivery Controllers, the general set of steps and ideas behind the process are excellent. Yes, I'm sure I'm a bit biased, but even trying to set that aside, every time I am stuck trying to figure out what the best approach is, this document always has a little tidbit that can help me along the way. I wish there was some sort of standardized methodology outline that folks could all use when performance testing network devices - perhaps that's a good thread to start here...

BreakingPoint Announces Support for Microsoft Exchange Protocol MAPI...

I think this is a great addition to the suite of items BreakingPoint covers. This is one of the more complicated ones to test and deal with, so I'd be interested to hear from folks who have used it, or other tools that can test this as well. I've read before about some Microsoft tools that will help scale your Exchange deployment, and have some sort of MAPI tester, but they are pretty slow. I don't know of any other test vendor that has this capability yet. Should be interesting to play with! Full press release can be found here: BreakingPoint Announces Support for Microsoft Exchange Protocol MAPI, Critical for Authentic Network Equipment Testing

Shunra Software Releases Shunra Virtual Enterprise for VMware

Virtualized stuff is always interesting to me, and I am glad to see at least one vendor who has put a lot of focus on adding features and functionality targeted to virtualized test efforts. Shunra has a decent summary page on how they work with VMware. It seems that you can emulate WAN conditions with VM images and Virtual Infrastructure, which would be extremely useful in testing apps and deployments. My company uses VI 3 and leverages a lot of VMware's technology to speed our testing process for many things. This will likely be a great tool for us to look into. Full press release here: Shunra Software Releases Shunra Virtual Enterprise for VMware Infrastructure 3