SANBlaze Storage Target Emulation - NextGig Systems, Inc.

NextGig Systems, Inc. - Network Connectivity & Test Solutions

Target Emulation

SANBlaze target emulation systems for FCoE, Fibre Channel and SAS provide a virtual, extremely cost-efficient configurable environment for SAN product development, testing and QA.

The systems reduce the need to deploy large farms of physical “scratch” disks or tapes, providing port density, high performance, non-volatile media at a fraction of the cost of physical disks or tapes.

The ability to add latency, have differing read/write sizes, inject a wide variety of errors and save and restore multiple disk configurations provides a flexible and invaluable tool for development, test and QA labs.

Overview

Flexible User Interface
Powerful web-based GUI allows you to quickly create, save and restore multiple configurations. For OS testing, easily save and restore various formatted disk configurations. Efficiently build a large number of formatted drives or tapes, create a predictable bad drive or integrate error conditions with very specific trigger events. Real time statistics, trace mode and a script building tool are all available from the GUI. From a single console, multiple systems can be configured and tests run simultaneously. All emulator functionality is also available from a CLI interface and can be automated using batch scripting.

Configurability
In target mode, each emulator port can be configured to simulate a wide range of disk or tape configurations, for a single device to many hundreds, all with programmable size, speed, profile and behaviors. When using both target and initiator modes, a device under test (DUT) can be connected to two ports on a SANBlaze system, one configured as initiator, one configured as a target. The DUT can then be exercised and tested using one system, with traffic generated and/or errors injected on either side with the ability to generate custom commands and responses.

Vendor Specific Devices
With the profiling functionality the system can be configured to simulate a specific vendor device such as a drive, tape or array. Numerous parameters can be configured such as vendor ID and world wide node name to simulate a specific device. Mode, diagnostic and custom inquiry pages can be defined, edited and written to create vendor specific test environments. Profiles can be built by attached target devices directly to the system and running the unique Profile Builder application.

Scalability
Target mode emulation can allow for one device or hundreds of devices to be emulated. Test cases can be saved and restored with a single command or mouse click, instantly changing the target environment from one configuration to another.

Performance
If you want to test at full line rate speeds, real drives do not keep up and have mechanics that add latency to reads and writes. SANBlaze systems can act as a wire speed target devices. BlazterMode operation allows for full line rate performance for most supported protocols.

Capabilities

Multiple Disk/Tape Configurations
SANBlaze target emulator solutions provide the ability to configure from 1 to 500 disks or "LUNS" per port, allowing a 24 port system, for example, the ability to simulate up to 12,000 drives or tapes. These configurations can be saved and retrieved via a web based interface or script. Each disk or tape can be the same, or have individual attributes, such as speed, personality, errors, etc.

Error Injection and Bad Drive Testing
DVT and Test Labs are often tasked with testing the error recovery capability of their product in the face of errors that previously have been difficult to create in a predictable manner. SANBlaze target emulation systems can emulate exact conditions, on command, and remain in the error state for a number of I/Os, for a period of time or indefinitely, allowing qualification engineering to characterize the ability of their product to deal with specific error cases. Multiple error trigger events allow control of specific error injection cases.

The software can also be scripted to simulate any error condition, including queue-full, lost I/Os, long latencies (seconds to minutes), read and write overruns and underruns, and check conditions with any SenseKey/ASQ/ASC combination, for example.

Performance Testing
SANBlaze target emulation systems perform target reads and writes at full line speed. For example, a 4 port Fibre Channel system will allow for four 4G Fibre Channel ports to do reads and writes at full line rates each. This full line rate throughput allows for testing to be done against a fast, predictable target with near zero latency. BlazterMode provides this performance capability across many ports, providing a very cost effective performance measurement device.

Screens

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Error conditions can be set to trigger on a number of conditions including time intervals, number of I/Os, specific commands or a range of LBAs. Errors can be combined or scripted to simulate deteriorating drive conditions, in a predictable and repeatable fashion.

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LUNS characteristics can be easily configured, from basic functions like size and latency, to complex settings such as Queue depth, mapping and user definable mode pages.