SOLUTION BRIEF

Page 1 915-3120-01 Rev. A, June 2014 www.ixiacom.com

The Promise and Perils of Data
Center Consolidation
Have acquisitions or organic growth brought your
organization the complexity of multiple data centers, even
though fewer would more-effectively support your mission
objectives? These data centers support vital elements
of business systems, so many times it is easier to leave
them operational. Eventually, many organizations end up
with a mesh of inefficient, difficult-to-maintain, and costly
network of data centers.
Data center consolidation is an increasing popular
approach for enterprises and government organizations
to achieve cost saving and gain efficiencies. However, the
process of shutting down and relocating hardware and
software elements creates complex challenges. The market
is littered with stories of consolidation projects suffering
cost overruns, long delays, and disappointing results
caused by:
Miscalculated dependencies
Under-scoped requirements
Challenges of supporting legacy applications across
WAN
Exposure to new security vulnerabilities as a result of
single point of DDoS attacks
Synthetic, Simplified Testing is a
Recipe for Disaster
Critical to the success of executing a data center
consolidation strategy is testing and validating every step
in the process. Many organizations mistakenly believe
they have done their due diligence by testing networks
for IP forwarding while verifying server and storage
performance with synthetic simplified tests such as those
provided by IO Meter. But modern networks, applications,
and storage workloads are much more complex and have
interdependencies than cannot be covered by these simple
tests. Cutting back on your testing budget and taking short
cuts that circumvent real-world application and storage
workload testing at scale is a recipe for disaster for your
organizational and personal success.
Ensuring Successful Data Center Consolidation with
Application and Security Testing
There is a Better Way
Ixia products and services test data center performance
and scalability by generating real-life, high-volume, and
complex networking, application, and storage workloads,
while injecting a battery of security attacks. With the
pinpoint knowledge gained by assessing the infrastructure
and finding hidden weaknesses at every step of the data
center consolidation process, IT personnel can make
meaningful adjustments and corrections to build resiliency
into their infrastructure.
PerfectStorm Real-World
Testing Solutions
PerfectStorm is Ixias latest testing platform that
modularly-scales to nearly a terabit of application traffic
in a single, integrated system. It generates stateful
applications and malicious traffic that simulate millions
of real-world end-user environments to test and validate
infrastructure, a single device, or an entire system. This
includes complex data, video, voice, storage, and network
application workloads commonly found in data centers.
SOLUTION BRIEF
Ixia Worldwide Headquarters
26601 Agoura Rd.
Calabasas, CA 91302
(Toll Free North America)
1.877.367.4942
(Outside North America)
+1.818.871.1800
(Fax) 818.871.1805
www.ixiacom.com
Ixia European Headquarters
Ixia Technologies Europe Ltd
Clarion House, Norreys Drive
Maidenhead SL6 4FL
United Kingdom
Sales +44 1628 408750
(Fax) +44 1628 639916
Ixia Asia Pacic Headquarters
21 Serangoon North Avenue 5
#04-01
Singapore 554864
Sales +65.6332.0125
Fax +65.6332.0127
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Applications Storage Networking Security
Application load
Application security
Server capacity
Contact center
VoIP
DC migration plans
Video services
NAS, SAN, and cloud
storage Capacity
Cache stress
Data dedup
Compression
Backup recovery
Application delivery
LTE EPC and Core testing
Mobile backhaul
Wireless LAN controller
Firewall
Session border controller
IPv6 readiness
Next-generation firewall & IPS
DDoS defenses
Lawful intercept
Data loss prevention (DLP)
VPN
Anti-virus, anti-spam
Cyber range
Validate the Entire Data Center
PerfectStorm meets your application and security testing needs across the entire data center and for data center equipment:
PerfectStorm Advantages
Performance and Scalability PerfectStorm assaults your
infrastructure with up to 960 Gbps of stateful application
traffic and 720 million concurrent TCP sessions, replicating
the load and behavior of millions of users, all from a
compact 12-slot chassis.
Dynamic, Real-World Application Traffic BreakingPoint
and IxLoad solutions support 200+ applications and
protocols, including Facebook, Skype, YouTube, Gmail, FIX/
FIXT, Amazon EC2/S3, SQL, Oracle, SMB, CIF, RADIUS,
SIP, RTSP, RTP, HTTP, SSL, IPSEC, and many others.
These protocolsplus thorough protocol fuzzing and fault
injectionallow you to produce a custom mix of traffic and
measure its impacts.
Complex Storage Workloads PerfectStorm provides an
easy path to stress-testing and tuning storage elements
with built-in tests for cache stress, data deduplication,
compression, locking, authentication, database emulation,
and backup recovery. Storage protocols supported include
SMB 2.1/3.0, NFS v3/4/4.1, CIFS, CDMI, HTTP, and iSCSI
Security A library of 35,000+ current, comprehensive,
and global security attacks ensures that your network is
not only secure, but secure under the most realistic cyber
attacks and extreme load.
Easy to Use PerfectStorm is delivered with software
solutions that have intuitive interfaces, extensive
automation, and an all-inclusive product and service
package provides a solution that is easy to use by your IT
staff at all skill levels.
Comprehensive PerfectStorm is the only solution that
provides comprehensive and integrated capabilities to
measure the resiliency of network, application, storage, and
security devices and systems.
Customizable PerfectStorm leverages Ixias ever-
growing library of application protocols and security
attacks, along with custom toolkits for simulating
proprietary applications and attacks. With these tools,
simulations reflect the real-world conditions your
infrastructure will face in production.
Future proof Our patented network processor
architecture drives unprecedented performance and agility,
allowing our dedicated team of network and security
researchers to update your PerfectStorm solutions
consistently with the most up-to-date security attacks and
application protocols, every 2 weeks.