A year ago this month at Ixia’s iSimCity testing facility, the Lippis Report launched round one of its public tests of top-of-the-line 10/40GE data center devices to measure performance and power consumption. The third round of testing is now complete and comprises the first-ever evaluation of 40GE switches. The data center cloud 10/40GE fabric test was free for vendors to participate and open to all industry suppliers of 10/40Gbps switching equipment. Ixia’s synopsis describes the test equipment used and the test coverage, along with the top 10 findings from the testing. The full results of the tests are published in the Lippis Report’s “Open Industry Network Performance and Power Test”.
The results of the tests were also discussed in a recent Enterprise Connect Webinar: Building Cloud-Grade Data Center Networks. Sponsored by Extreme Networks, this webinar reviews best practices and tools for implementing data center clouds, and features industry expert Nick Lippis discussing the new test results.
Round 3 testing (October 2011) included the following products:
Top of rack switches evaluated:
- Alcatel-Lucent OmniSwitch 900-40X
- Arista 7124SX 10G SFP Data Center Switch and 7050S-64 10/40GE Data Center Switch
- BLADE Network Technologies (an IBM Company) IBM BNT RackSwitch G8124 and IBM BNT RackSwitch G8264
- Brocade VDXTM 6720-24 Data Center Switch
- Dell/Force10 S-Series S4810
- Extreme Summit X670V
- Hitachi Cable Apresia15000-64XL-PSR
- Mellanox/Voltaire® VantageTM 6048
Core switches evaluated:
- Alcatel-Lucent OmniSwitch 10K
- Arista 7504 Series Data Center Switch
- Extreme BlackDiamiond X8
- Juniper Network EX Series EX8200 Ethernet Switch
Companies tout their products’ features and functions, but how do you know if they really work as promised? When shopping for higher-priced consumer products, a new washing machine for example, many of us rely on 3rd-party information. Customer reviews, user ratings, and lab-tested reviews from Consumer Reports help us to quickly sift through the marketing fluff and find the right product for our particular need. But where do you turn for comparative and lab-tested data when you’re shopping for a 10 or 40 Gigabit Ethernet (GE) switch?
Last year, the Lippis Report took this burden in hand and, with the use of Ixia’s iSimCity testing facility, began testing top-of-the-line 10GE data center devices to measure performance and power consumption. Two rounds of testing are now complete and published in the Lippis Report’s “Open Industry Network Performance & Power Test for Cloud Networks Evaluating 10/40 GbE Switches”.
Round three testing is scheduled for October, 2011. Network equipment providers have until August 1, 2011 to register their 10/40GE switches for this testing event. All equipment providers are encouraged to participate in this independent evaluation event to give users the data they need to make more informed purchasing decisions.
Round 1 (Dec 2010) included the following products:
ToR switches evaluated:
- Arista 7124SX 10G SFP Data Center Switch
- Arista 7050S-64 10/40G Data Center Switch
- BLADE Network Technologies, an IBM Company
- IBM BNT RackSwitch G8124
- BLADE Network Technologies, an IBM Company
- IBM BNT RackSwitch G8264
- Brocade VDXTM 6720-24 Data Center Switch
- Force10 S-Series S4810
- Hitachi Cable, Apresia15000-64XL-PSR
- Voltaire® VantageTM 6048
Core switches evaluated:
- Alcatel-Lucent OmniSwitch 10K
- Arista 7504 Series Data Center Switch
- Juniper Network EX Series EX8200 Ethernet Switch
Round 2 testing (April 2011) included the following products:
- Arista 7124SX 10G SFP Data Center Switch
- Arista 7050S-64 10/40G Data Center Switch
- Brocade VDXTM 6720-24 Data Center Switch
Prospectus for round 3 test event (October 2011):
- The test is open to all suppliers of 10 & 40 Gigabit Ethernet switching equipment, both modular and fixed configurations. All suppliers must register by August 1, 2011 to enter the test.
- The test will take place in the modern Ixia test lab named iSimCity, located in Santa Clara, CA. Ixia will supply all test equipment needed to conduct the performance tests.
The Lippis Report recently published the first test results of a series of open industry benchmarking tests on several 10GbE switches targeted for use in public/private data center clouds. Included in the newly published online report are comparative vendor measurements from the first round of testing. The following data center switch vendors participated in the first round of testing at Ixia’s iSimCity:
- Alcatel-Lucent Omniswitch 10K
- IBM BLADE RackSwitch G8124
- IBM BLADE RackSwitch G8264
- Force10 S-Series S4810
- Arista 7504 Series Data Center Switch
- Hitachi Cable Apresia 15000-64XL-PSR
- Juniper Network EX Series EX8200
- Voltaire Vantage 6048
The test methodology, designed by Ixia and Lippis, included a range of performance benchmarking tests and energy-efficiency measurements:
- RFC 2544 throughput, latency, and jitter measurements for both L2 and L3 traffic.
- RFC 2889 congestion control to determine if head-of-line blocking and/or backpressure were present for both L2 and L3 traffic.
- RFC 3918 IP multicast throughput "no drop rate" test.
- Power consumption test using Ixia’s IxGreen to test and measure each device's ATIS (Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions) TEER (Telecommunications Energy Efficiency Ratio) rating.
- A custom public cloud simulation test to determine the traffic delivery performance of the DUT when forwarding a variety of north/south and east/west traffic in cloud computing applications. Throughput, latency, jitter and loss were measured.
These tests are important for data center equipment manufacturers as a way to differentiate their solutions in a highly competitive market. Today’s data center operators require switches capable of delivering high volumes of VM-driven traffic with low latency and power consumption, and the Ixia/Lippis test program offers independent validation of performance claims.
These tests also generated a great deal of interest from data center operators and large enterprises, who appreciated the impartial, comparative data to help them evaluate different switch vendor offerings, make purchase decisions and optimize network configuration.
A video about the test and its participants can be found here. Those interested in the next round of testing involving 40 and 100 GbE interfaces and currently being scheduled for April 4-8, 2011 can download the test prospectus detailing logistics, test methodology, schedule, test result promotion and FAQs here.
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