Spirent Communications Introduces SmartFabric for Fibre Channel SANs


Spirent Communications today introduced a new test suite for configuring, generating, and analyzing traffic used to measure the performance of storage networking infrastructure equipment, including Fibre Channel switches, fabrics, emerging Fibre Channel-over-IP (FCIP) gateways, and DWDM systems. The new SmartFabric software tool works with the company’s SmartBits Fibre Channel modules and SmartBits chassis to emulate hundreds of attached devices per test port, thereby reducing the need for complex test environments.


According to the company, SmartFabric increases testing productivity by allowing users to set up multiple flows of Fibre Channel frames to simulate storage traffic and measure device forwarding rates, latency, latency distribution, delivery and frame loss.
Specifically, Spirent Communications says SmartFabric supports full line-rate traffic generation and analysis at 1 and 2 Gbps, up to 192 ports simultaneously, generates up to 512 independent data streams and analyzes up to 64K streams, supports point-to-point and loop topologies, performs loop initialization, fabric login, and name server registration for one or many devices, and emulates up to 126 devices on a loop.


“Up until now, testing the scalability of Fibre Channel switches and systems was only possible by using hundreds of PCs and a massive amount of storage devices costing hundreds of thousands of dollars,” said Bahaa Moukadam, vice president of product marketing, Spirent Communications, SmartBits Division. “Using this new Spirent solution eliminates a major headache for our customers while costing a fraction of doing it the old way.”


Spirent Communications’ SmartBits’ SmartFabric will be available in August for a U.S. list price of $3,995.

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