Integrating virtualization within a host and across a data center requires careful planning and thorough testing to ensure that the functionality, performance, security, and reliability of applications and data is not compromised. Virtualization removes the traditional silos between server, storage and network, making it critical to test in the context of an end-to-end environment.

To help you better understand the role of testing in these leading-edge data centers, Ixia is bring a virtual data center and test lab to VM World, August 29 – September 1, 2011 in Las Vegas. Our testing experts will be on hand to discuss the challenges you face as you implement the technology, methodology, and topology necessary to successfully deploy your cloud-based, virtual environment. Come and see:

• What comprises our demonstration virtualized data center and test lab
• How you can effectively test a virtual environment
• Why testing is critical for successful virtual data centers
• The key benefits of validating QoS, QoE, and performance

What

• Ixia will demonstrate and test a completely virtualized data center including the following components:
  • Virtual firewall and IDS/IPS security elements
  • Virtual web switching for intelligent load distribution across network elements and web infrastructure
  • Web server farm with real content
  • Virtual edge router & VSwitches
  • VDI (virtual desktop interface) infrastructure
• Ixia will introduce its new IxLoad-VM solution that evaluates application performance across the virtualized data center. The IxLoad VM solution will be used in conjunction with IxVM – a solution used to assess the L2/3 network performance in virtual environments.

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How

• Ixia virtual test interfaces are attached flexibly in various network locations of the virtual data center to test the entire topology or a single element
• IxVM performs routing emulation and IPv4/v6 traffic generation to evaluate the overall routing and switching capability of the virtual topology
• Simulate background database transactions and make use of the IxLoad-VM to generate real traffic against the security/web infrastructure and monitor the quality of experience
• Emulate real RDP clients to scale-test the VDI infrastructure

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Why

• Network equipment manufactures (NEMs) and virtual appliance vendors must ensure their solutions meet context-based performance and security requirements where there are no physical boundaries.
• Shared resources in the cloud make it difficult for cloud providers and enterprise consumers to characterize performance. Cloud providers need to validate and maintain performance per customer/tenant based on service level agreements (SLAs).
• Consumers of virtualization need to capacity plan since each virtualized instance may use a configurable amount of compute and IO resources.

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Key Benefits

• Ensure the virtual data center or cloud service will perform with high availability and security
• Allow Enterprises and cloud providers to independently validate SLAs
• Perform capacity planning for current and future needs
• Isolate portions of the virtual data center or cloud and pinpoint security flaws, performance bottlenecks, and operational issues
• Get the most performance from any virtualized platform by optimizing resources under different virtual topologies
• Improve the productivity of quality assurance groups by allowing for segmented virtualized test environments on the same compute platform

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