Spirent Communications, a test and measurement solutions provider in wireline,
wireless, and satellite space, in association with VOICE&DATA held a seminar
titled 'Data Center and Web Application Testing'. The objective of the seminar
was to reach out to the testing community and supplementing their technical
knowledge with Spirent Communications' expertise on next-generation
communication networks, devices, and applications. The event, held in Bengaluru
in June, was attended by CIOs, CTOs, IT managers, and heads of testing and
measurement from various verticals, data center companies, OEMs, and service
providers.
The unique seminar delivered insights into the technologies and the processes
needed to evolve tomorrow's data center successfully. Through the review and
analysis of recent public tests, David Newman, founder of Network Test, an
industry-leading independent test and measurement lab, interestingly walked the
attendees through themes-including the latest data center and web application
developments; key public test results and findings, highlighting Cisco and
Juniper equipments; how and what a company with a data center needs to test; and
an insider's forecast of the data center trends.
Criticality of Testing
Today, networks are in a constant state of evolution that is aimed at
increasing business opportunity, operational efficiency, and user functionality.
At a time when CXOs, IT managers, and equipment manufacturers alike are working
to leverage advancements in data centers and web applications to increase
resource utilization, ensure seamless migrations, and establish strong
competitive offerings, the seminar provided a great opportunity for the required
understanding on the key issues and challenges facing today's dynamic data
centers.
David Newman, president, Network Test, presenting his expert views on Data Center Testing from End-to-End |
The country manager of Spirent Communications, HS Bhaskar, kick-started the
event, highlighting the need for data center testing solutions for business
critical communications. Somic Goswami, associate director,
PricewaterhouseCoopers, set the tone for the day's event, speaking about
managing complexity in the context of today's growing IT complexity driven by
the demanding business needs of customers. He mentioned that a large number of
CEOs today say that IT complexities and challenges require a lot of attention.
It has been observed that IT complexity is not only about its operations but
also in architecture, applications, data and infrastructure. He said, “There
lies the challenge of consolidation and adapting a new wave like virtualization
IT as a service to bring the right kind of RoI and value management to meet the
growing demands and to justify IT spends.”
Public Test Cases
David Newman, president, Network Test, in his presentation on 'Data Center
Testing from End-to-End', focused on the fundamentals of network testing,
reviewing key metrics of 101 tests, recent public tests, and evolving data
centers. He spoke about how and what one needs to test and the key public tests
conducted, including tests for Cisco and Juniper Networks. He also touched upon
the trends in the data center space.
With Spirent's testing solutions, he spoke about tests performance
measurement, scalability, and security of network devices and live networks of
NEMs, service providers, and enterprises. While sharing his experiences in key
public test cases, he dwelled on data center performance benchmarking. He said,
“With data center connectivity rapidly evolving, virtualization, and
consolidation becoming buzz words, and 10G servers 40G/100G gaining momentum, an
important question arises-how do data centers validate them from end-to-end?” He
also enumerated some of the challenges in validating them-what are the kinds of
metrics to be used, how to scale, does multicast matter, how do events at L2/L3
affect L4/7 and vice-versa, and can we correlate them, and what test standards
need to be followed.\
And in the evolution of data center, we find new trends like virtualization,
convergence of data and storage networks, and 40/100G Ethernet, which all make
data centers bigger and faster. So while we perform virtualization testing, the
key criteria to be taken into account are how to attach the test instrument,
whether the test instrument's numbers can be trusted, how to compare virtual and
physical device performance, and protocol and feature support in virtual
devices.
Mindshare with audience in panel discussion: (L-R) Ibrahim Ahmad, group editor, VOICE&DATA Michael Lynge, market communications manager, Spirent Communications; Somic Goswami, associate director, PricewaterhouseCoopers; Saumya Upadhayaya, industry analyst, Frost & Sullivan, South Asia & Middle East; and David Newman, founder, Network Test |
Approach to Testing
The important presentation of Michael Lynge, market communications manager,
Spirent Communications, threw a lot of insights on Spirent's approach to data
center testing, and key solutions that are advancing it. He said Spirent
Communications offers test and measurement solutions to players in the
diversified space including network equipment manufacturers, service providers
and enterprises. Its solutions help in testing their R&D labs, QA and product
verification labs, service validation labs, service management on live networks,
network testing, data center testing and security testing. He further said that
Spirent TestCenter testing solutions were used by important players in the
telecom space, including Cisco and Juniper Networks.
The panel discussion, moderated by the group editor of VOICE&DATA, Ibrahim
Ahmad, focused on data center testing in an evolving, complex environment,
wherein the panelists presented their views to the audience on the latest data
center and web application developments, on how and what elements of the data
center must be tested, along with forecasting data center trends, etc. Expert
panelists including Saumya Upadhayaya, industry analyst, Frost & Sullivan, South
Asia & Middle East; David Newman, founder of Network Test; Somic Goswami,
associate director, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Michael Lynge, market
communications manager, Spirent Communications, exchanged views with each other
and provided information on key issues sought by the audience.
Saumya Upadhayaya said, “Enterprises are increasingly making use of IT to
manage their core and adjunct business operations. Thereby, data centers are
becoming part of the core strategic initiative of organizations. Some of the key
issues facing existing data center managers are scalability, utilization,
increasing need for power and cooling, along with the management concerns of
heterogeneous environments. In addition, there is an increasing interest and
adoption of virtualization technologies. Enterprises are also realizing that the
dramatic reductions promised by virtualization are not as easy to achieve as
envisaged.”
Virtualization is not a panacea, but brings with it its own set of challenges
that need to be countered by data center managers. The management of data center
has greater impact in the virtual world than in the physical because of greater
interdependencies. Hence, it is important to assess the end-to-end performance
of virtual environments before the enterprise systems goes live. Thorough
testing and change management policies enable isolation ofdefects before hand,
thereby giving sufficient time to resolve the issue and minimize downtime to the
live system.
Kannan K
kannan@cybermedia.co.in