Network Test: 10 Essential Benchmarks for High-Performance Data Centers
Large-scale converged data centers are relatively new, and the networking industry hasn’t yet reached consensus on ways to fully exercise the new technologies involved.
This in depth white paper from Network Test covers 10 test sets that should be a mandatory part of any comprehensive evaluation of data center switching. It also describes the less-than-ideal practices that should be avoided.
Metrics include:
- Port pairs, meshes, and cheating at latency
- Comparing store-and-forward and cut-through latency
- Fabric redundancy
- Pause response time
- Queueput
- Maximum forwarding rate
- Back-off
- Back-to-back
- Microbursts and fan-in
- MAC address capacity
- Head-of-line blocking
These benchmarks provide a starting point for building on well-understood methodologies. Device vendors and network operators can be confident they validate data center performance in a rigorous, meaningful, and repeatable way.
