My normal day job is teaching about virtualization for enterprise IT. I don’t often get to install large environments. As a result much of what Spirent does is way beyond my knowledge. My normal day job is teaching about virtualization for enterprise IT, so I don’t often get to implement large environments. As a result much of what Spirent does is way beyond my knowledge.
It sounds cool to be able to test 100GB Ethernet at line rate across many ports and to automatically generate and update test plans. VFD3 got invited because a lot of the networks they are now testing involve VMs. Increasingly the networks are also software defined, so Spirent needs to drive the SDN tool. As a result their test systems are driving VMware as well as network devices. Adding VM provisioning, migration and tear down to the test script is cool. The script already drives network creation & testing. This will be important for large cloud providers as they proof the service levels of their cloud solutions. These kinds of proofs will be essential to getting large scale enterprise applications deployed. The proof of higher service level will differentiate clouds. Remember, not all public clouds treat VMs as disposable the like Amazon. Some will even put in performance service levels.
I think Spirent would be a cool product set to use if I did need to test a large or critical public or a private cloud implementation.. The ability to drive all the layers is necessary for the provider to confirm that they can deliver on their promises.
Disclosure: I attended Virtualization Field Day 3 as a guest, nobody at VFD3 or the presenters has paid for this post or had any editorial input. Any omissions and inaccuracies are mine.
© 2014, Alastair. All rights reserved.
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