Customer Case Study
A major storage vendor adds the SwiftTest 3000 to its arsenal of load-generating test tools
With a product designed for massive scalability and high availability, one major storage vendor has
turned to the SwiftTest 3000. Their customers manage multiple petabytes of storage and up to a billion
files in a single file system, so testing must match that capacity. With the SwiftTest 3000, this test
team can now simulate realistic customer scenarios with as many connections as needed.
About The Product
The customer profiled in this paper is a major storage equipment vendor offering multipetabyte scale-out
NAS storage systems for information storage and distribution. Designed to store millions to billions
of active files in a single namespace, the product offers operational efficiency and administrative savings
for large organizations seeking to better manage their growing demand for file-based storage. It combines
massive scalability with automated file management to quickly deliver information globally.
The Test Environment
The company’s test environment includes multiple systems for customer simulation. This includes
10-20 physical storage devices under test. There may be as many as 80 whitebox servers simulating clients
pointed at the largest of these. The lab’s network mimics the variety of configurations that might
be found in customer data centers, needing to anticipate and reproduce those setups. The lab focuses
testing efforts on the massive scalability of their product line. They are concerned primarily with number
of files and bandwidth, trying to pump as much NFS and CIFS traffic and as many connections as possible
through their systems.
Challenges for The Team
Chris Ruhl is the software engineer responsible for optimizing the test environment. He tells us that
concurrent load management is a priority, that they need to understand how multiple users interact with
the data with maximum scalability. This customer perspective requires and flexibility to easily set up
a wide variety of scenarios. Combine this need to change configurations and complete test cycles quickly,
with the requirement for millions of TCP connections and GB of traffic per second, and you have a big
headache. The team has in-house tools and uses a variety of test methods, with approximately 25% of the
growing test team dedicated to test tool development. But their internal tools are often clunky and Chris
says that the lab is generally resource constrained.
"We’re glad to have another tool in our arsenal to throw at our machines. We need as much
concurrent load as we can get, and the SwiftTest 3000 allows us to generate all that’s required
to realistically simulate our customer use cases."
- Chris Ruhl, Software Engineer
Enter SwiftTest
Chris discovered SwiftTest and quickly determined that the SwiftTest 3000 would be a beneficial addition
to their environment. He was pleased to get relatively quick approval and had the appliance up and running
in short order. Chris says that the out-of-box experience with the SwiftTest 3000 was outstanding. He
worked closely with the SwiftTest team to set up specific configurations and get the box quickly integrated
into his environment.
About the SwiftTest 3000
The SwiftTest 3000 is a high-performance load-generating system designed for comprehensive storage network
testing. More than a simple load generator, the system provides protocol-level control and semantic definition
that enables the broadest possible range of test cases. The SwiftTest 3000 features 8 singly configurable
1GE ports and an additional 1GE management port. It supports multiple authentication types and originates
NFS, CIFS, and iSCSI traffic, simulating a great number of clients and scenarios at once. It easily handles
multiple scenarios with varying lists of commands within each of 6 protocols (CIFS v1, v2, and NFS v2,
v3, v4 and iSCSI)—all running at the same time.
The SwiftTest 3000 is the clear choice for companies in the storage industry, because SwiftTest knows
storage better than does any other test tool vendor. It is the industry’s elite testing tool due
to the SwiftTest focus on storage-specific features; high-volume traffic handling, customer-centric graphic
interface, and prebuilt tests and wizards.
Test Development Environment
The SwiftTest 3000 includes a graphical application, the SwiftTest Test Development Environment, that
provides flexible, granular configuration options and test results analysis. Testers can now find problems,
modify parameters, and quickly see results using the SwiftTest interface. Problem isolation is fast and
accurate, leading to much-appreciated efficiency in working with development engineers.
Results: Five-to-one Port Reduction
Chris Ruhl says that as the stress meter on their systems goes up, having another tool—the SwiftTest
3000—to add to the load is proving invaluable. The immediate implication of adding the SwiftTest
3000 to lab is the reduction in number of ports required to generate equivalent traffic. Under equal
workload, a single SwiftTest interface is now the same as 5-6 previous interfaces or 5 ports on their
old 2U client machines.
Along with power consumption savings and efficiencies created by reducing port numbers, Chris Ruhl realizes
increased test productivity in the lab, thanks to the SwiftTest Test Development Environment. He finds
the SwiftTest test tools intuitive, and simple to manage, with as much or as little control as you’d
like. You can use canned configurations out of the box, or opt to configure completely from scratch.
Chris says, “you can twist and twiddle with the information in the headers, or you can simply point,
click, and run.”
New ability to add variety to the stress runs they need—easily and quickly in the TDE—means
the lab can test more scenarios and understand more of what their customers actually do. As the company
moves to even larger data center capacities and larger configurations using 10GE interfaces, Chris anticipates
being able to leverage the SwiftTest 5000 to simulate hundreds of clients and even more effectively put
their products to the test.
"I like the fact that with the SwiftTest Test Development Environment, I can click and walk away.
No one has to check back in to see that stress configurations are done correctly."
- Chris Ruhl, Software Engineer
Why Buy the SwiftTest 3000
- Time savings in executing multi-protocol test suites with consistent test development methodology across
all protocols.
- Ease of test case creation and control at the protocol level. Granular configuration and results are
available for individual commands.
- Consistent, repeatable results. Tests start with the press of a button and deliver repeatable results.
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