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Data Center Testing : Tasting of Data Center Testing

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VoicenData Bureau
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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.

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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
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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.\

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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.

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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

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