At Emulex Labs, benchmarking is our obsession. We are experts on benchmarking Fibre Channel. We run Iometer in our sleep. With the launch of our OneConnect™ Universal Converged Network Adapter (UCNA), we have become obsessed with IP benchmarking.
After examining some freeware tools, we found that the finest solution appeared to be from Ixia. Ixia’s highly scalable solutions generate, capture, characterize and emulate network and application traffic, establishing definitive performance and conformance metrics of network devices or systems under test.
We focused in on IxChariot, which contains Application Scripts to measure end-to-end network performance, the response time and throughput of application transactions across the network.
Ixia provides a library of free, pre-defined scripts that you can easily, extensively customize to reflect the unique character of application traffic on your network. Application Scanner lets you automatically create scripts for any custom or commercial application without having to understand the scripting language.
IxChariot:
- Creates Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), User Diagram Protocol (UDP) and RTP IxChariot scripts and Ixia hardware stream definition files from line traces generated by protocol analyzers
- Creates scripts for TCP and UDP (including RTP) applications that use Winsock calls
- Creates IxChariot application group definitions from Winsock traces and from line traces generated by protocol analyzers
- Automatically generates scripts based on a Winsock trace, performing optimization where needed
- Traces all Winsock traffic to help you better understand the interaction of applications with multiple connections or processes
- Enables generation of IxChariot scripts that preserve the timing delays contained in the source trace files.
- Enables creation of scripts for applications running on non-Windows clients
- Presents details about the traces you record
- Enables you to select a single application stream from a line trace, create a script for that stream and edit the script as required
- Allows you to combine multiple streams into a single script
- Loads line trace files that contain IPv6 network traffic, and generates Ixia stream definitions corresponding to the IPv6 traffic
- Generates IxChariot scripts that include large payload files
Ixia’s customer support was phenomenal. As we spoke, they became quite interested in our benchmarking Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE). Our discussions led to joint development in the area of benchmarking processes for the new converged networks. Together, we drafted an Ixia Black Book on CNAs.
As a primer on the technology and testing of CNAs, the Black Book begins with an introduction to CNA technology, the developments that led to the FCoE protocol and data center network convergence. It includes detailed test plans using Ixia’s IxVM, a tool for measuring the performance of virtualized systems, which guides the reader through key tests required to thoroughly measure the performance of a CNA. Step-by-step instructions include using IxChariot™, a component of IxVM, to measure TCP throughput, UDP throughput, latency and storage input/output (I/O) performance in virtualized and non-virtualized environments.
If you are interested in benchmarking converged networks, download a free copy.
To learn more about Ixia Black Books, visit: blackbook.ixiacom.com/blackbook.html