With more and more companies turning to network functions virtualization (NFV), it's not surprising that people want this new technology as functional as possible. That's building plenty of interest in testing tools to see how performance will proceed in advance, and Advantech and 6WIND recently got together to offer up new abilities for the already-powerful OpenStack NFV Test Drive platform.
The OpenStack NFV Test Drive is built on the strength of Advantech servers and the 6WIND Virtual Accelerator. The new upgrade allows up to 40 GE speeds on Ubuntu OpenStack compute nodes. That makes it generally equivalent to wire speeds and allows for kernel-based virtual machine (KVM) hypervisors to engage in resource optimization. With such a system, those developing software applications—including application vendors, integrators, and network operators—can test those applications as virtual machines on the OpenStack compute nodes, seeing how performance runs across 10 and 40 GE networks.
Hypervisor bottlenecks, reports note, have been one major impediment in driving software application performance, and by extension, NFV adoption. It's also had a limiting effect on the scale of data center operations, and given how important data centers are becoming, having extra advantage at that level certainly doesn't hurt matters.
With 6WIND Virtual Accelerator systems involved, OpenStack NFV infrastructure systems get access to a complete, fully-tested solution for better performance with support for multi-vendor operations, along with better virtual switching and networking, support for current workloads using Virtio drivers, and service chaining capability thanks to software-based switching. Those interested in trying out the service can go out to 6WIND's website and run the trial from there.
Advantech's vice president and general manager for its networks and communications group, Ween Niu, commented “As virtual machine per server density rises, so does the need for extra network capacity. With today's announcement both operators and VNF vendors alike can take a qualified step up in network performance while leveraging the full benefits of Ubuntu OpenStack and 6WIND virtual acceleration.”
It's a natural step to take, overall; as more demand comes into play for NFV and for data center operations and the like, people are going to want to see those applications move faster and do more in the same amount of time. So in order to respond to that, developers are going to need proper test beds in order to make sure their applications are up to snuff. Tools like those offered by 6WIND and Advantech, meanwhile, are going to help provide those test beds and ensure that developers have the best chance at competing in a market where competition will be brisk to say the least.
The combined efforts of 6WIND and Advantech should go a long way toward making a lot of entrants in the NFV and data center markets sound competitors, and when a business is essentially selling a market advantage, it's likely business will be brisk.
Edited by
Stefania Viscusi
