Ixia has announced its expansion into virtual network and virtualization testing. The IxVM product suite enables data center managers to assess virtual infrastructure performance and capacity. IxVM builds on the company's industry-leading library of layer 2-7 performance test tools that discover, manage and automate testing in large virtualized environments.

Large enterprises, system integrators and service providers are rapidly building out data centers utilizing new virtualization technologies without the tools necessary to evaluate system performance under load. Data center managers need to measure the performance of virtual network and server resources when thousands of users access those services. Legacy network resources were straightforward to isolate and balance. Virtual infrastructure makes it extremely challenging to isolate the network functions and bottlenecks.

With Ixia's new suite of IxVM products, it is now possible to test layer 2/3 virtual network resources and layer 4-7 virtual applications. IxChariot VM, a component of IxVM, uses software endpoints - small software components that run on each virtual machine - that send and receive test traffic, while measuring performance. This makes it possible to source traffic from virtual servers in the same manner as the supported applications. IxExplorer VM uses software endpoints to generate layer 2/3 traffic to test features such as VLAN and QoS.

"In our rush to cash in on the benefits of virtualization, we seem to have overlooked the problems associated with assessing the end to end performance of virtualized networks," said Zeus Keravala, Senior Analyst at Yankee Group. "IxVM provides the vantage points for emulating and measuring system performance down to the virtual component. Ixia has demonstrated strong leadership and claimed first mover advantage by filling this gap with their virtualization test initiative."

IxVM allows:

• Performance testing of thousands of VMs simultaneously with real world application traffic
• Independent measurement and convergence testing of VM migration
• Tuning of virtual resources such as servers and NICs
• Measurement of key performance indicators like delay, jitter or packet loss through virtual switches
• Testing of network performance variances when running applications over different operating systems

IxVM discovers, organizes and manages thousands of virtual endpoints to present an aggregated performance view. By integrating with VMware^TM, IxVM automatically discovers the components of the virtualized architecture. Pre-deployment testing can compare and contrast performance from alternative configurations or evaluate performance when applications are moved between virtual machines. Even low-volume application or network performance testing on an active system could uncover dynamic bottlenecks that may go unanticipated during planning cycles.

"Virtualized environments are changing the playing field for measuring the actual performance of the network when thousands of users are attempting to share the network resources," said Atul Bhatnagar, President and CEO of Ixia. "IxVM is the perfect tool for planning and deploying virtualized data centers. Data center operators can now provision their infrastructure accurately while reducing provisioning costs and ensuring optimal network performance."